Dig
by paintthesilence
Summary: After all was said and done, Axel thought Roxas was done with him, but the blond just keeps popping back into his life. So... where do we go from here? Love. Friendship. Musical Theatre! AU. Akuroku RikuSora Zemyx and oh so many more...
1. Too Tired for Ice Cream

**AN:** Hello, all! Hope you're all well - despite technical issues, I've managed to get the first chapter of this thing to upload before heading off to Seattle for a bit, so... cool. I'd like to point out one last time that this is **not** a sequel to Tease, or related to Tease, or... yea. It's its own deal. Hope you like it!

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Riku Evans squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to remain asleep, the insistent rustling of sheets intruding on his previously peaceful consciousness, or lack thereof. Determined to regain his restful state, he furrowed his brow, on the cusp of sleep when the sheets moved again, the crinkling and swishing carried across the room accompanied by a long sigh and the familiar creak of his brother's bed-frame. A deceptive minute of silence followed, in which Riku thought he might just be able to…

_Swish, swish, rustle. Rustle, swish, crumple, crinkle, sniff, creak-  
_"Axel!"

"What?"

Rolling over to face Axel's side of the room, Riku opened his eyes enough to glare at the redhead, whose alert expression revealed him to be wide awake, his pale face illuminated in the streetlights and moonlight filtering through the blinds.

"What?" he said again, pushing long fingers through disheveled, burgundy spikes.

"Can you not?"

When Axel simply stared back, confused, Riku imitated his previous actions, grasping his sheets and making as much noise as possible with them as he shifted to a more comfortable position.

"Oh, that," Axel replied, waving his hand as if to dismiss Riku's request. "Sorry, it's just – I had to toss and turn. It's traditional, you know, when one's trying to make a decision. Tossing and turning."

Riku blinked slowly, squinting at the neon blue 1:46 shining out from the clock beside his bed. "Decision about what?" he mumbled.

"Well, I was trying to decide if I should wake you up or not. You know, because it's pretty late, and I was thinking that on the one hand, I really should, and on the other hand, you might be pissed off at me if I woke you up when it's roughly two in the morning. But I was really pretty sure I would just go ahead and do it."

"How convenient," Riku muttered, burying his face in his arms as he lay on his stomach. "I'm awake. What do you want?"

Another rustling of sheets indicated Axel's movement into a fully sitting position, and after a few moments of silence, Riku looked up. "Go on, what do you want?"

"You don't remember what today is? Err… well, yesterday, I guess, since it's technically tomorrow now. I mean, it's today. But it's-"

"September 15th?"

Axel nodded, fixing an expectant stare on Riku's bleary-eyed expression. "Which is…?"

Riku closed his eyes again, letting out a sigh as he tried to remember something special about the previous day. "Namine's birthday," he said finally, opening his eyes. "She's 17."

"And?"

"And she can go to R-rated movies? I don't know, Axel, what are you expecting? It's two in the morning, either get to your point or go to sleep."

"September 15th, Riku, it's the day we moved in here," Axel said indignantly. "12 years ago today. Err…yesterday. Tonight. You know what I mean!"

Riku took a minute to think before speaking again. "Shit, you're right."

"I can't believe you forgot," Axel muttered, leaning back against the window and ignoring Riku's pointed glare. "It's a _tradition_, we _always_ stay up, and you just finished your homework and went to bed."

"It's been a long day, ok?"

"Mmhmm. A long day. Good reason to compromise our-our _brotherhood_!"

Riku snorted, recognizing Axel's joking voice. After 12 years of living with the redhead, he'd become well accustomed to the subtle variations between his serious tone and his more common, sarcastic tone.

"We're not brothers," he challenged, willing his weary muscles to wake up and move him into an upright position. "We just have weird fucking parents."

"Yea, yea, you say that every year. The fact remains… 12 years. I think once you pass the decade mark of two families sharing a house, you've pretty much merged into one, big, happy family, yea?"

Riku nodded slowly, giving up his argument, as he did every year on that night, and leaning back against his headboard, although he did still think he had a point about having weird parents. The two boys had heard the story countless times: their fathers had been good friends in college, and had only gotten closer after graduation. Over the course of a few years, they'd both gotten married, and when Riku and Axel were born mere months apart, their mothers had started to become closer to each other as well, getting the kids together to play and getting to know each other more than they had in previous years. After 3 years of watching the boys play, fight, and above all, _grow up_ together, the two couples had tossed around the idea of moving into a nicer house in a better neighborhood together, and by the time the boys turned 5, they had made that idea a reality, picking a neighborhood with a good elementary school and a lower crime rate than the rest of the city. 12 years later, the two families still lived in the same house, and Axel and Riku continued to have good times, continued to fight, and continued to aid each other in the ever-present process of growing up.

"Do you remember the first night still?"

Riku nodded again, smiling a little as he turned to face Axel. "There were boxes everywhere," he said slowly, erasing their furniture in his mind and replacing it with memories of cardboard boxes – they'd seemed so big at the time. "And we didn't have beds yet."

"My mom came in with a bunch of blankets…"

"And we curled up on the floor," Riku continued, "And you were scared."

"I wasn't _scared_, I was _apprehensive_!" Axel protested, lying back again. When Riku simply raised his eyebrows, he sighed. "Fine. It was scary, ok? I always had a nightlight, and you were like, obsessed with sleeping in absolute pitch-black darkness."

"It was _not_ pitch-black. It was like this, with the light from outside coming in!"

"That's not the point!"

"Uh huh."

"The point is," Axel said definitively, "The point is… it's been a long time. And… as weird as it may be… I'm glad that we're here. It's good to have a brother."

"Agreed."

"For sure."

"No doubt."

The two boys lapsed into another silence, broken only when Axel let out a massive yawn. Riku eyed his clock again.

"Ok, so since it's _actually_ 2:00 now…"

"Yea, we should go to bed."

"Goodnight, Axel."

"'Night, Riku."

One last rustle of sheets, then silence, sweet silence, and Riku Evans let a smile spread across his face as he felt sleep finally overtake him for the night.

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The next morning proceeded as usual for Axel; he was awakened around 6:45 by his backpack, dropped by Riku onto his sleeping form to remind him that there was school to wake up for. Groaning, he attempted to move out from under the monstrously heavy bag of schoolbooks, eventually managing to pull himself into a sitting position at the edge of his bed, his toes curling in the navy blue carpet beneath his feet. He gave Riku, who had apparently already showered, a woeful look before rubbing his eyes and heading for the bathroom. He turned on the shower, then stepped back into the bedroom to search the laundry hamper for a clean-enough towel. Recognizing a familiar purple towel (peppered with large stains from the last time Namine had insisted on the boys helping her put blue streaks in her hair), he pulled it from the pile and closed the bathroom door behind him, wondering idly if anyone could ever come up with a legitimately good reason for him to ever leave his room.

After all, he thought as he shucked off his pajama pants, they _had_ outfitted it pretty well. When you walked in from the hallway, there was a sort of corridor of empty space down the middle of the room, leading to the bathroom door directly on the other side. Axel had the right-hand side of the room, with the window, and Riku had the left. A few years back, their parents had gotten them a shared computer, which inhabited a desk at the foot of Riku's bed, and the previous summer had seen the addition of two plaid bean bag chairs, a mini-fridge, and a small TV, which the boys had bought with money saved up from summer jobs. Much to Riku's chagrin, the TV lived at the foot of Axel's bed, and the walls on Axel's side housed a collage of photographs, magazine ads – anything, really, held to the walls with incredible amounts of scotch tape, as well as any quotes that Axel, or any of his friends, found memorable, scrawled in black sharpie in any empty spaces. Riku's wall was home to a few band posters, accompanied by magazine or newspaper articles he found interesting or entertaining, and an ongoing To-Do List, which held anything from "get toothpaste" to "Go to Europe before age 30."

By the time Axel made it downstairs, haphazardly threading his belt through the belt loops on his jeans as he went, Riku was already mostly done with breakfast, his fork scraping the remnants of pancakes from his plate as he carried on conversation with Axel's mother.

"We were thinking they'd come over around 5:30, so we have plenty of time for dinner and coffee, and you guys can go off and do your thing, you know…"

"Who's coming at 5:30?" Axel asked, finally finishing buckling his belt and reaching for a pancake.

"Tomorrow night," Riku said. "The Jacobs."

"Mm. I see."

Axel and Riku exchanged a less-than-enthusiastic look; Axel's sarcasm more pronounced than Riku's. Sora Jacobs was in their grade at school, and his family had been family friends with theirs for as long as they could remember. Despite their parents' urging, neither Riku nor Axel had ever gotten particularly close with Sora, and every time they were forced to hang out, they ended up awkwardly watching a movie or playing cards until their parents were all done catching up with each other. What made it even more awkward was the fact that, all things considered, they really _should_ have been friends; all of them were Theatre kids, and had been working together on school productions for the past 3 years. Many of Axel and Riku's friends were also Sora's friends, or at least knew him better than they did, which struck Axel as kind of ironic when he considered how many times he'd sat for 2 hours in silence with the brunet, eyes glued to some action movie or other. Their differences lay in that Sora was an actor – a singing, dancing, makeup-covered, costume-clad _actor_, and Riku and Axel were a different breed of Theatre kid – Tech Theatre kids. In fact, Riku was considered pretty much the top dog in the techie community at school ("Not like computer-techie, like lights-techie. Building stuff-techie. You know, plywood and screws and climbing around," he'd explained to their parents). He called almost every show, and was granted by Ms. Lockheart, the school's Technical Theatre teacher, his own set of keys to the building, to the lighting cage, the booth, the dimmer closet, every storage closet in the theater, makeup rooms, dressing rooms, the greenroom – everything; as well as the honor of being one of very few students allowed to call the teacher Tifa. He had a knack for being a hardass without making people hate him, and managed to get everyone working for him without complaint, a skill that Axel had always been mildly jealous of. Axel himself had picked up Tech at the same time Riku had, hoping he could get his Arts credits out of the Tech Theater class without actually having to do any 'art'. He had found himself actually having fun one afternoon, crawling through the trap-door on the theater roof to the catwalk, where a number of lights were hung out above the audience, and as he'd focused another 30-pound lamp, tightening the bolts into position with a bright orange wrench, he'd decided he'd just go ahead and keep on tech-ing. Since then, he'd generally been the one to run the counterweights, a job that didn't require extreme attention to detail (not one of Axel's strengths), but still required the ability to actually pull a rope with a fair amount of resistance on the other end. In any event, neither of them had ever found any real connection with the cheerful brunet, and the prospect of a Friday evening spent playing game after game of Spoons in silence was vaguely disheartening.

Axel chewed his pancake slowly, only half listening as he heard his mom tell Riku that one of Sora's friends would be coming along; his parents were out of town so he was staying with Sora's family, and she hoped that Axel and Riku would be friendly. When questioned further, she revealed herself to be utterly uninformed as to _who_ that friend would be, and after determining that there was no further information, Riku stood up from the table.

"We should go," he said shortly. "It's almost 7:45."

"Gimme a second? I'm not done yet," Axel protested, attempting to stuff all of his remaining breakfast into his mouth at once.

Riku, however, waited for no one, and Axel was forced to run 3 blocks, his backpack thudding against his back, to catch up to him.

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Axel was unsurprised to find most of the Tech Theater class already congregated in the theater by the time he arrived, a few minutes after the bell for 6th period had rung. Ms. Lockheart was usually about 5 minutes late or working on something, but for some reason, Axel was one of few students in the class who actually took advantage of the opportunity to meander through the hallways, stop to get a drink of water, look at the identical still-life paintings from 3rd period Draw/Paint displayed on the walls, etc. Locating his friends, he headed for the front of the house, where he dropped his backpack and slumped down in his usual spot between Namine and Xigbar.

"Late again," Namine noted, pulling his backpack close enough to use as a footrest. Tucking a piece of soft, blonde hair behind her ear, she fixed him with an expectant look.

"I'd like to look at it more as you guys all being early," he replied, shooting her a smile as he nodded hello to Xigbar and, one seat further down, Riku. "Lockheart here yet?"

As if on cue, Tifa emerged from the shop, jogging apologetically across the stage and sitting down at the edge, her legs dangling down into the orchestra pit.

"Sorry, sorry guys, I was just, um, I was having an issue with the band saw, but that's all figured out now, and I'm just a couple, ah, a couple minutes late, right?"

Most of the class nodded, including Axel, who personally thought Ms. Lockheart was pretty cool. Over the past couple of years, a group of sort of core techies had emerged – those who were generally running every show, didn't suck at building, and actually liked tech. This generation, the core techies were Riku, who was pretty much the head of everything; Axel, who did odd jobs and ran the counterweights during shows; Namine, who insisted upon running everything to do with lights; Xigbar, whose main strengths lay in building, but generally helped out with props or running crew during shows; and Marluxia, who didn't take the Tech class, and in fact, would probably not be able to effectively decipher a piece of 2x4 from a handsaw, but was strangely gifted in the arts of both costuming and makeup, and was arguably the straightest male on the crew. Ms. Lockheart had come to appreciate and befriend the core techies, as well as the others, who joined any given show as something to do, or a way to stay involved when they didn't make the cut to be _in_ the show. Likewise, Axel was one of the kids at school who was well aware that while Ms. Lockheart was a young, pretty, female teacher, she knew her power tools. On his first day of class, Axel had thought she was joking when she'd told him to "show that table saw who's boss." He'd soon learned that she was not only dead serious, but she really _did_ know how to show a table saw that it was not, in fact, the boss of her, and it was kind of scary. Either way, the group of core techies was missing one member – Larxene, who had run sound for the past 4 years, had graduated; quite a blow to the team, which was now looking for someone slightly more on the creative side than Riku to design and run the sound for the Fall Musical.

The Fall Musical had been fairly controversial this year in other ways, too. While Tifa was the Tech Theatre teacher, Leon Leonhart, a hard-faced man in his late 20's, was the regular Theatre teacher. Leon directed every show, although he and Tifa generally collaborated on choosing which ones they would do. It was in choosing the Fall Musical that the controversy had emerged. Leon and Tifa had narrowed it down to three choices by the beginning of the school year, and had planned a meeting with the principal to decide which it would be. Unfortunately, the meeting had taken a different turn, and the principal of the school had thought it might be nice for the production to be an original one – namely, the musical written by the summer school Playwriting class, which was an elective taken by students who wanted to get their arts credits out of the way during the summer. Tifa had thought it sounded cheesy, and Leon had been outright infuriated, but the principal's mind was not to be changed easily. They'd arranged for another meeting, and today would be the day that Tifa and Leon would announce to the Tech class, and the school, what the Fall Musical would be. Cast the show any later, and there wouldn't be enough time to build the set and rehearse enough before they'd have to open, so September 16th it was, and judging by Leon's expression as he entered the theater, the musical was not going to be first-rate.

Tifa sighed from her spot on the stage as Leon strode to the front of the house, ever-dramatic.

"Well, guys, looks like Mr. Leonhart's here, so, um, he's gonna just give a sort of summary of what the musical is," she announced, picking wood shavings off of her jeans. "We don't have scripts for you guys yet, but I've got a pretty good idea of what the set is gonna be, so you can start pulling platforms and flats today. We've really cut our preparation time short fighting over what show we'd do, so it's going to be a lot of work, and a lot of coming in on Saturdays- don't make those faces at me! Um, I'm sure the musical will grow on you guys after a few weeks…"

Leon gave a curt nod before turning to the class. "We lost," he said, brow furrowing as he leaned back against the stage. "We're being forced into putting on a show written by 15-year-olds. It's cliché, and sappy, and romantic, and everything you would expect, but Dr. Highwind has apparently promised this class a show, and parents got upset when we tried to suggest a few legitimate alternatives, so there it is."

Sighing, he hung his head for a moment before looking up to continue. "So, the assignment that this Playwriting class had over the summer was to write a musical… centered around a song that they liked. An actual, copyrighted, on-the-radio song. Part of the experience was that they had to go about figuring out how to do this legally, which, unfortunately, they did. Believe me, I tried to get out of it for legal reasons – there are none. They picked…" he trailed off for a moment, flipping open a copy of the script he'd brought in with him. "They picked 'Dig.' I don't know this song, but they managed to get sheet music and arrange it for their awful, flat, predictable characters. Hence the name of the musical, Dig."

"Like… the Incubus song?"

Axel didn't turn around to see who had asked the question; he didn't recognize the girl's voice, so he knew it was one of the freshmen he didn't know.

Leon sighed again, checking the script for the credits. "No, it's not _like_ the Incubus song, it _is_ the Incubus song."

After a moment of awkward silence, Namine raised her hand. Receiving a nod from Leon, she straightened up in her chair a bit before speaking. "So, what is it _about?_"

"It's a love story," he replied brusquely, dropping his script onto the stage behind him, where Tifa began to fiddle with the pages.

Clearing her throat, she let out a small laugh before smacking Leon lightly on the back of the head.

"What Negative Nancy isn't telling you," she began, ignoring the daggers Leon was glaring at her, "is that it's the story of a guy named Theo, as in, Theodore. It says here," she continued, opening the script, "It says here, Theo is an aspiring young actor who wants to make it in showbiz. So he goes to California with his friend Teddy, also short for Theodore, as his manager, and his other friend Camilla. He wants to be a big star, and at an audition for a TV show he meets another young, aspiring actor, although this one is a woman, named Lola. Oh god, could they have possibly picked a more cliché name? Moving on, surprise surprise, Theo falls in love with Lola. Neither of them makes it onto that TV show, but they meet again at an audition for another TV show, which they both, coincidentally, are cast in. Teddy the manager runs off to get married to Camilla… Then, let's see… Oh, here's a good name, _Chantal_, she's the producer-slash-director of the TV show, and she has a thing for Theo, so she convinces both Theo and Lola that if they get the other written off the show, they'll get a, and I quote, a 'massive pay raise.' She wants them to break up, because she wants to be with Theo. So they each befriend a writer on the show, Theo befriends Tommy and Lola befriends, oh _man_, Lola befriends _Lilith._ And eventually, Chantal's nefarious plot is revealed, and they all sing and realize how much they love each other and they're all such good friends. It says, Chantal is fired, and they end with the song."

Looking up, Tifa appeared to be trying very hard not to laugh, and Leon was shaking his head, cursing under his breath. In an attempt to be polite, the class remained silent, save for Axel, who was chuckling loudly from his seat, despite Namine smacking him on the arm as if she were trying to kill a large mosquito.

Leon cleared his throat and checked his watch, then looked up at the class. "Well, auditions will be after school next week, and the show will be cast by next Friday. If any of you are… somehow… interested in being in it. Either way, I'm late for a parent meeting, so… get to work."

After Leon had finished stalking out of the theater, the class slowly began to get out of their seats, Tifa assigning small groups to different tasks. Namine and Axel were sent to a storage area in the stage left wing to pull flats, and as they examined the various pillars, streetlights, roman columns, and doorframes they'd have to move, they each contemplated the play. Axel thought it might be nice to try doing it as if it were making fun of itself, although, not having read the dialogue yet, he wasn't sure just how bad it would be.

Watching Namine move a large column, he contemplated her instead. He'd met her doing tech as a freshman, back when her hair had been short, choppy, and dyed purple. He had thought about talking to her a few times early that year, but she always seemed to be hanging out with Kairi, and she always seemed to know exactly what she was doing, which was fairly intimidating for him. Their first conversation had occurred when Axel had learned the hard way he had been hanging all the lights backwards. He'd nearly fallen off the catwalk in fright when she'd appeared behind him, eyes flashing and purple hair blowing in the wind from the open trapdoor as she ripped the wrench from his hand to smack him in the head with it. When he'd apologized profusely, she'd told him to stop being such a baby, and a beautiful friendship had been born, thus widening Axel's circle of friends significantly.

Namine and Kairi had been best friends since middle school, and, while Kairi had less tempestuous mood swings, they could be remarkably alike at times. Kairi had befriended Luxord, an exchange student from London whose parents had sent him to the US for high school, as had Xigbar, and the four of them had become quite close. They played poker regularly, and Luxord was less than subtle about his attraction to Kairi. As Axel and Namine had grown closer, he had been accepted into their group as well, making hanging out backstage at shows a lot less boring than it had seemed it would have been. The way it worked out, Xigbar and Luxord would play cards with Axel by the counterweights backstage during shows; Xigbar since he was a techie, and Luxord so that he might catch a glimpse of Kairi changing costumes between scenes. As it happened, while Namine had been building her empire of lighting, Kairi had taken to the stage as an actress, and had at least a small role in almost every school production.

Namine wiped her hands on her jeans before reaching up to put her hair into a ponytail. During sophomore year, she'd grown her hair out, and over the summer before junior year, she'd dyed it back to its natural blonde. Axel almost hadn't recognized her when he saw her with blonde hair, but by September, he'd gotten used to it, and enjoyed making dumb blonde jokes at her expense (although he didn't enjoy the resulting violence directed at him).

"Who do you think is gonna be Theo?" he asked, looking away as she caught him staring.

Namine snorted, grabbing another column to move out of the way. "Who's _always_ the male lead?"

Axel nodded, reaching for a flat that had finally been exposed. "Sora Jacobs. I dunno why I even asked, you're right."

"He's pretty good friends with Kairi," she noted, stepping back to allow Axel room to maneuver the flat out of storage. "I've hung out with him a few times. He's a nice guy. Pretty cute, too. Big, blue eyes, athletic-ish build, although no more muscular than you…"

"That's nice."

"You should date him," Namine said matter-of-factly, grinning at Axel as he dropped the flat to floor behind them. Axel stared at her skeptically, somehow managing to narrow his eyes and raise his eyebrows at the same time.

"What?" she said, shrugging. "He's gay, you're gay. He's cute, you're… interesting…"

Giggling at the glare she received, she reached for another flat. "Stop pouting, it makes you look like a girl! And you know I'm just kidding…"

Axel made an extra-pouty face for good measure before moving to help her with the flat, which seemed to be stuck on something. "How do you even know he's gay? Jeez, I can't even imagine him being either way, straight _or_ gay. Sora Jacobs just isn't a sexual being, you know? He dances around and snaps his fingers during the whisper sections of songs and has dramatic stage-kisses with girls like Kairi, where they're both wearing so much makeup their lips don't technically touch each other."

Letting go of the flat, Namine poked her head around the side to give Axel a sarcastic look. "Hun, he's a theater kid, and he's a guy. So…"

"I resent that! You know, there are plenty of straight, male theater kids! Xigbar, for example?"

Namine paused, apparently deep in thought. "Xiggy's not really a theater kid, though."

"Uh, he takes the class, Nam."

"Yea, because he likes the power tools," Namine retorted, finally pulling the flat free of whatever had been hindering its movement.

Dropping it behind them again, Axel sighed. "Uh, Riku?"

"_Riku_ is _questionable_," Namine said, raising one eyebrow. "I would suspect – don't give me that look! I would _suspect_, that Riku is hiding something."

"And why is that?"

Namine simply shrugged, a high pitched sort of 'nnnnn-I-dunno" sort of noise emanating from behind her thin smile.

"Great reasoning, that is," Axel said sarcastically, getting behind a doorframe to push it out of the way. "You know, his first kiss was with _Kairi_. I don't think a guy can get any straighter than kissing Kairi. Except, of course, by kissing you, you know, the epitome of femininity…"

Namine snorted, striking a model pose in her cargo shorts and wifebeater. "I would urge you to remember that said first kiss was in the 8th grade, and they went out for a few brief months before breaking up. And since then? Which girls has he been dating since Kairi? Ohh, that's what I thought, none that either of _us_ knows of. And you _cannot_ claim that Riku's a nonsexual being. I haven't seen a body like his since the Abercrombie & Fitch models were standing around topless at the mall, leeching money from girls like me and Kai who wanted to take pictures with wickedly beautiful men."

"So take pictures with Riku, then."

"Aha!" she exclaimed, pointing emphatically at Axel's face. "You're changing the subject, because you know I'm right! The first kiss may have been Kairi… but the second? _The third?!_"

"You are such a creeper, you know that?" Axel shook his head and grinned as he kicked a fake plant further back into the storage closet. "Riku's… a very focused kind of guy. Which is not to say that he's no fun! I mean, you know that, we hang out all the time. He's just… I mean, you know. He's just not really into romance, or sex, or anything."

"Your naïveté is killing me, Axel. _Nobody _isn't into sex."

Axel narrowed his eyes. "_You're_ not into sex."

"Oh, I'm _into_ sex," she replied, giving Axel a sultry look from behind a roman column.

"…you're a virgin, Nam."

Namine stuck her tongue out. "I know you are, but what am I?"

Shaking his head, he plunged further into the storage closet, tugging at a piece of wood that he thought might have been attached to a flat until it splintered and fell off of whatever it had been attached to. From outside the dark closet, he heard Namine's voice continue.

"I'm not talking about actual sex, here, Ax, not real, complete, intercourse, per se, but more… just… sexual _things_. It's not like I haven't done _anything_!"

"Nam, I really don't care what you have or haven't done," Axel said, emerging empty-handed from the back of the closet. "Moving away from the topic of my brother's sexuality, though…. Marluxia! Marly's straight, and undeniably a theater kid. He does _makeup_."

Namine looked vaguely interested at the mention of Marluxia, scuffing her sneakers against the floor. "Marly's straight, yea."

"No argument?" Axel said, pushing her jokingly out of his way as he moved to another section of the closet. "The kid has pink hair. He makes dresses and organizes the school's makeup, and you would sooner believe _he's_ straight than Riku, who has absolutely no suspicious hobbies, tendencies, mannerisms…"

"Well, I have solid evidence than Marly's straight, whereas Riku? Not so much."

Axel stopped shifting set pieces for a moment to stare at Namine. "Solid evidence? What the hell's _that_ supposed to mean? Are you _blushing_?"

"No!"

"Namine's blushing! Oh my God, you're blushing! What did you do with him? _What did you do with Marly?_"

"We hooked up _once_ over the summer!" she blurted out, kicking Axel in the shins to quiet him. "But you can't tell anyone! Kai will have a fit if she finds out, she… likes him too."

Nursing his injured shin, Axel raised his eyebrows. "Competition?"

"I never said she was competition," Namine replied, picking at her ivory-colored nail polish. "I just don't want to hurt her feelings. I'm very competitive, though. If I thought she was any real threat, well… I dunno. We're best friends, we're not going to stop being friends because of some _boy_."

Axel gave a sagely nod, and Namine nodded back, and they stood there in nodding silence for a moment.

Taking a deep breath, Namine turned back to the second storage closet, grasping the edge of a flat to pull. "Either way," she said determinedly. "Sora Jacobs and you. I vote yes."

Axel sighed, helping her disentangle a fake vine from the flat. "I don't even know him. Really, like… he's come over to our house a bunch, but like… I don't even remotely know what he's like. Who does he hang out with, anyway? Just Kairi and the other actor kids, or…?"

Namine hesitated for a moment before tugging hard, pulling the flat from its confines. "Um… yea, he hangs out with me and Kai, and then other actor kids, I guess, like… Tidus, or whatever. But he's not really close with most of the other actor kids. I mean, they're good enough friends, but they just know him as like… Cheerful Gay Sora Who Sings Good, you know? They don't really _get_ him."

"Yea, I mean like, _close_ close friends. You know, like you and me."

"Well, Kairi. And Luxord, he and Luxord get along surprisingly well. He has some close friends from that acting school he takes classes at in the summers, and then, um…"

"And then what?" Axel asked, studying Namine's suddenly guarded expression. "What, who else?"

"No one," she said quickly. "That's it. I dunno."

"You don't know? Why are you all weird all of a sudden?"

"No, no, no, I didn't want this to come up," Namine moaned, resting her head on a fake streetlight. "I don't wanna say. You're gonna get all weird and tense and you'll be in a bad mood for the rest of the day, and I was gonna ask you to get ice cream with me and Xiggy after school, and you're gonna pull that 'I'm so tired, I'm just gonna go home' shit, and-and-no…"

Axel narrowed his eyes. "Who is it?"

"Never mind!"

"Just tell me, Nam!"

"It's not important!"

"You're _making _it important by refusing to tell me, if you'd just say it and get it over with, I can't imagine who it could possibly-"

"Roxas Casey," she said quietly, looking away.

"Oh." Axel stiffened a little, his face unreadable. After a moment, he reached for a column he had been meaning to move. "I dunno why you'd think I'd get pissed off over that," he said, his tone indecipherable.

"I just… didn't want to bring his name into the conversation if I didn't have to, you know?"

"Why? You think I can't handle it?"

"No," Namine said, sighing. "It's just… you guys have…history."

Axel paused, having set the column down out of the way. "Yea, but it was a long time ago, we were freshman when it ended. I'm over it, really."

"Okay."

"I am."

"I believe you."

The two stood quietly again for a moment, Axel looking at the floor, Namine looking at Axel, until finally, Axel looked up.

"Just out of curiosity, though, they're… close friends?"

Namine nodded. "Yea."

"How close?"

"Um… they hang out a lot. Like, every weekend. Sora brings him with sometimes when he goes out to eat with me and Kai. They laugh a lot."

"What, like a date?" Axel asked fiercely, his head snapping up to meet Namine's eyes.

"No no no, not like a date," Namine said hastily. "They're not going out or anything. If they were, Sora's parents would never let Roxas stay at their house."

Axel turned to the storage closet, his shoulders sagging a little. "He's staying at Sora's house? And Sora's… gay. And _he_'s… Wait, _he's_ the one staying with Sora right now?"

Namine nodded again, helping to pull the last flat from the closet as Axel stood by, arms hanging limp by his sides.

"Yea, his parents are out of town, so he's staying at Sora's for a few days. Why?"

"I talked to him once last year," Axel said slowly, moving Namine out of the way and holding onto the flat. "I just…" He paused again, gripping the edge of the flat tightly. "We're having dinner with Sora's family tomorrow night, and mom said Sora was bringing a friend." Sighing, he pulled hard, wrenching the flat from its familiar storage spot and dropping it with a loud clattering noise onto the others behind him as the bell rang to end 6th period.

"You know, I'm feeling pretty tired," he said, refusing to meet Namine's eyes. "I think I'm just gonna head home, if that's all right. I'll get ice cream another day."

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**AN:** Thanks so much for reading! Please feel free to leave a review and let me know what you thought! Next chapter will be up sometime pretty soon - exciting spring break, yea? XD 


	2. This is the Sound of Two Hearts Breaking

**AN:** Thanks so much for the reviews on the first chapter! I'm so glad you guys are interested so far. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to hear from too many other techies, since I very rarely meet any outside of a Theatre Tech context. Then again, most tech kids I know are inexplicably drawn to Mountain Dew, Fanfiction, and fire, so hey, I guess it makes sense, yea? XD I was considering waiting a few more days to post this, but I'm avoiding cleaning and/or sleeping, and no one else wants to do anything at 11:30 on a Thursday night, so why not get the story moving, right? A first chapter laying stagnant on ffnet is a lonely, lonely, thing, so here's to keeping it company. XD Again, thanks for reading (and reviewing, and alerting, and faving, etc), and I hope you like this next chapter!

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"_It's just… you guys have…history."_

Axel could still remember the first time he'd seen Roxas Casey. Not some vivid memory that he could picture exactly as he'd seen it at the time, but more… He could remember the events – the story – and he could remember the feeling he'd had, laying eyes on the blond he'd eventually come to love for the very first time.

It had all started shortly after Axel and Riku's families had moved in together. Noting that, while the boys played well together most of the time, their quarrels had increased in both magnitude and frequency since they'd started sharing a bedroom, their parents had collectively decided that both of the boys should sign up for a sport – something to keep them a) active, and b) away from each other for a few hours. In the case that Riku and Axel chose the same sport, they figured it would help them learn to work together in a team setting.

Luckily, Riku had gone with tennis as his chosen sport, and Axel, at age five, enamored with the idea of being a Tough Guy, had picked football (American football). All had gone well at practice, and everything had been smooth sailing up until the first game.

It happened towards the beginning of the game; all the Peewee Football parents sat in the stands cheering their children on, including Axel's parents, Riku's parents, and Riku, who, while not a parent, had nothing else to do that day, and was forced to go and watch. Axel had been passed the ball, and he had taken off running. Running was, in fact, his main strength. He was extremely fast on his feet, but not very good at aiming the ball when he threw or keeping the ball in his hands when he attempted to catch it. The trouble had begun when a large 6-year-old from the opposing team had blocked his way, and was heading toward Axel to tackle him. Petrified at the thought of being hurt, Axel had skidded to a halt and turned around, running as fast as he could away from the offending 6-year-old, only stopping to look back as he entered the end zone of his own team, thus scoring a touchdown for their opponents. The other kids had all gathered around to laugh at him, and, humiliated and hurt, Axel had simply begun to cry. As the taunting voices of the other children were upstaged by one in particular, the one who'd made to tackle him in the first place, he'd furiously yanked off his helmet, and as the boy imitated a chicken's clucking noises at him once again, Axel had pushed him, hard, the force knocking the boy to the ground. By that time, the coach and Axel's parents had made it over to the crowd of children, and as Axel's mom cradled him in her arms, stroking his already spiky hair, she'd accepted the coach's 'suggestion' that Axel leave the team.

The others had headed back to the car to give Axel some space, while his mom had waited for him to change back to his regular clothes. Taking his hand as he emerged from the locker room, his eyes still red and his nose still running from crying, she'd led him through the community center towards the exit, only to be dragged to the side as they passed the glass wall looking in on an indoor soccer field, where a Peewee Soccer team appeared to be holding practice.

"Mom," he'd whispered, face pressed close to the glass, "Mom, _look_, look at him, isn't that cool?"

"Which one?" she'd asked, bending down to see the players from Axel's perspective.

Axel had simply pointed, and she'd followed the direction of his finger to a blond boy about his age who was rolling the soccer ball back onto his foot and kicking it straight up into the air. The boy looked up when he noticed them staring, and gave Axel a shy wave.

The next thing she knew, Axel's mom found herself inside the room, chatting with the coach as Axel, true to 5-year-old style, cheerfully acquired a new skill from the blond. By the time they left the community center, Axel had made a new friend named Roxas, and the coach, an easygoing college student who coached in his spare time to make some extra money, had been happy to admit Axel to the team.

From that day on, the two had become fast friends. Roxas's parents were often out of town on business, and during those times, Roxas occupied the floor space between Riku's and Axel's beds. After a few years, Axel and Riku's parents half expected to see that mess of blond hair poking out of the blobby, gray sleeping bag on the floor every day when they would enter the boys' room to wake them up in the morning.

Over the years, their friendship had gone through all the usual ups and downs – disagreements, arguments, flat-out fights. The two boys' distinctive personalities meshed exceedingly well at some times, while at others, they clashed horrendously. Roxas had a sharp, daring personality – he was adventurous and brave and fun, and when Axel talked to him, he could tell the blond was really _listening_. However, Axel's mom had come to the conclusion, over years of observation, that the frequent absence of Roxas's parents had directly led to what she could only describe as a faltering of his self-confidence from time to time. For instance, while he soaked up affection like a sponge when others initiated it, he seemed hesitant to initiate hugs on his own; as if he didn't know if he'd do it quite right, and he didn't want to take any chances because he _really_ just didn't think he'd got the hang of it. His immense determination to excel at soccer was another demonstration; he and Axel would often stay after practice as they got older until it got dark out, working drills over and over until Roxas was at least vaguely satisfied with himself. He held himself to sometimes unrealistically high standards, and got upset with himself when he couldn't always meet them.

On the flipside, Axel's gentler, not so much calmer as… more _thoughtful_ ways of relating to the world often helped to guide Roxas when he seemed a bit less under control. However, thoughtful did not always equate to wise, and Axel often managed to think of perfectly logical reasons why it would be okay to stick a fork down the garbage disposal and turn it on, or why it really _was_ a good idea to stop Riku's laundry while it was in the wash and dump it, sopping wet, into a laundry basket so he could do his own laundry first. And while he could logically convince himself that it would be alright to do any number of bizarre things, whenever he found himself just a little bit too "apprehensive" to try something, Roxas could convince him it would be alright. For Axel's mom, an example that often came to mind was when Axel and Roxas were in 8th grade, and Roxas had thought it would be "_so awesome_" to burn their failed math tests together. Axel's logic had led them to do this in the bathroom sink ("So if it gets out of hand, we can just turn on the water, right?"), resulting in a scorched sink, a bathroom with a lingering smoky smell, and pipes clogged up with excessive amounts of half-burnt paper and ashes.

And throughout the ups and downs of life and friendship, soccer had remained a constant for the two. Riku had dropped tennis after a while, but Axel and Roxas continued to play soccer year after year, at school and on local youth teams, in the park, by the river, in parking lots, wherever, whenever, soccer. Axel's agility and build granted him a natural affinity for the sport, and Roxas's sheer determination to succeed kept him good.

It was after various soccer practices, in fact, as the boys showered in the school gym, that some of their most significant conversations would happen. As they often stayed later for Roxas to work on his shots, they ended up being the only two in the room, and they would talk over the chest-high dividers in the showers as they rinsed the dirt and sweat from their bodies. It was there that they discussed their thoughts when, in 7th grade, they each kissed a girl for the first time.

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," Roxas had said, shrugging as he tried to reach his soap to his back. "I mean, really. She had so much fucking lip shit on I thought I'd get stuck."

"Ugh, I know," Axel had replied, rubbing shampoo into his hair. "Rikku wears this weird strawberry shit."

"Oh, strawberry is the _worst_, it's worse than cherry, hands down!"

It was there that they'd talked when Roxas had found a girl he'd actually respected in 8th grade.

"Olette?" Axel had repeated, eyebrows raised. "You have a thing for Olette?" Don't you know she's-"

"I know, I know, she doesn't like guys, but damn!" Roxas had said, sighing as he let the water run over him. "Damn! It's 8th fucking grade, whatever happened to experimenting, you know? How can she be so _sure_ if she's never _tried_ being with a guy?"

"Yea, well, how would you feel if a guy said that to you?" Axel had asked. He'd been joking, but only sort of. The truth was that by the beginning of 8th grade, Axel had been increasingly aware of his attraction to other guys. Unfortunately, the general male culture in Junior High School was not conducive to bi-curious interludes or homoerotic conversations between any given guys, so Axel had figured he'd just keep quiet about it. The showers after practice were becoming less and less comfortable for him; he always found himself thinking of what parts of Roxas that gray, plastic divider was hiding, the water dripping off of every naked, wonderful inch of- _Aww, man…shit. _By the middle of their 8th grade year, Axel had kissed two boys and Roxas was only mildly suspicious of the fact that Axel claimed taking cold showers was relaxing for him after practice.

And it was there, around that time, after a grueling evening of practice, that Roxas had asked one simple question to start the gears of change turning. Axel was enduring his now-usual cold shower, his shoulders still tense from the shock of the frigid water as he slid his bar of soap across his body.

"Hey, have you ever thought another guy was hot?"

Axel had tensed even more at the question, pretending not to be fazed as he studied the blond's expression for any clues to his purpose. Unfortunately, Roxas was unreadable, and he looked up as Axel's silence grew longer.

"Um… I mean…" Axel had stumbled over his words, trying to think of what to say without giving himself away.

"It's not like it's that weird, is it? I mean, it's not just me, right?"

"You think a guy is hot?"

"You got an issue with it?" Roxas had challenged, looking sideways at Axel as he washed his arms. Before Axel could respond, he continued defensively. "It's not like I'm fucking gay or something. You don't have to have a fucking heart attack."

"I'm not having a heart attack! I never said you were gay, ok? Calm the fuck down, Roxas. Yea, I've thought other guys were hot," he'd admitted, turning the water even colder as he tried to block out his instinctive thought process. If Roxas thought a guy was hot, then Roxas might be having the exact same shower issue, and Roxas might just come on around that divider at any given moment, and God damn, could it be time for a bi-curious, homoerotic interlude?!

"Axel!"

"Yea? Sorry, I was just thinking about, um… you know. I wasn't listening, sorry."

Roxas had stared at him for a moment, then flushed a little and turned away, moving to rinse the soap off of himself. "Never mind," he'd said, and that had been the end of it. For the time being.

Two days later practice came around again, and this time, Roxas had a new question.

"Have you ever liked a guy?"

Axel was slightly more confident this time, having spent the past two days coming up with lines to say to Roxas that would make him feel comfortable confessing anything he might want to confess. Unfortunately, as he met Roxas's eyes, the sharp blue stare seemed to bore into his mind, erasing anything clever or witty he had thought of to say, and he ended up managing an awkward sort of "Uh, what do you mean?"

"I mean, have you ever liked a guy? You know, _liked_ a guy, like… romantically," Roxas said, squeezing a glob of shampoo into his hand.

"Well, you know," Axel had said vaguely, shrugging.

Roxas paused, having shoved his shampoo-covered hands into his hair, and narrowed his eyes. "No, I _don't_ know, that's why I asked."

Axel was quiet for a moment, studying the tiles on the floor. Looking up, he turned to face Roxas, putting on his best Understanding Friend face. "Listen, Rox, if you're-"

"What? If I'm what?" Roxas had interrupted, savagely washing the shampoo from his hair. "I already told you I'm not like that! I already told you I'm not… I'm not gay."

"Well then why are you asking me all these bizarre questions?"

"What do you mean 'bizarre'?" he responded quickly, his voice rising as Axel challenged him.

"I mean it seems like you're trying to get me to say I-"

"Have you ever kissed another guy?" Roxas demanded, resting his folded arms on the divider.

"I…"

"Have you?"

"I-I dunno," Axel stammered, taking a step back as Roxas stared him down.

"What do you mean you don't know? You either have or you haven't," Roxas said sharply, leaning against the divider a bit more.

The two were caught in an unbreakable gaze for a moment, Axel attempting to find words.

"Yea," he said finally. "I have. Twice. What of it?"

"You have?" Roxas repeated, his eyebrows raising a bit in surprise.

"Why the hell would I lie about it, to make myself seem cool?" Axel replied sarcastically. "Don't tell anyone though, alright? The guys on the team would flip out if they knew, especially after what happened with Bobby."

Roxas sighed and nodded. Earlier that year, a boy named Bobby from the soccer team had been involuntarily outed when some others from the team had walked in on him with another guy. Bobby had endured exactly one week of being called a faggot both behind his back and eventually to his face before quitting the team. Axel said hello to him in the halls from time to time, trying to communicate to him somehow that he wasn't like the others; he wasn't one of the ones who'd talked about him that way.

"Is it different from kissing a girl?"

Axel shrugged, turning his shower off and wrapping his towel around his waist. "Yes and no. I mean, it's all kissing. But I think it's different. I think it's better. But then again… that's just my preference. Everyone's different, you know?"

"…better?" Roxas asked, reaching for his own towel as he, too, turned off his shower.

Axel could feel the knot that had been growing in his stomach get even tighter as he secured the towel to his hips. As he stepped out of the shower stall, he turned to Roxas's, where the blond was still fastening his towel on. Taking a deep breath, he took a step closer.

"I could show you," he blurted out, his voice much shakier than he would have liked. "I could show you, and you could just try it to see what you think. Without being… you know. Just… just to see, you know, just to see how you like it. _If_. _If_ you like it. To see if you like it."

Roxas looked up too as he stepped out of the shower stall, water still dripping from his hair onto his chest as he stood in front of Axel. "Just to try it," he said definitively, his voice shaking a bit too. "Even if I like it, it doesn't mean I'm gay."

"Right," Axel confirmed, the tightness in the pit of his stomach tensing even more. He could feel the anticipation all through his body; his chest, his arms, his fingertips – he resisted the strong urge to lunge at the boy, to grab him and kiss him and touch him and lick him and _oh God_, Roxas was stepping closer.

Axel reached out a tentative hand to Roxas's waist, pulling him closer into a sort of embrace, and then Roxas's hands were resting just so lightly on his chest, and he could feel the blond's lips trembling when they kissed, he'd wanted to do it for so long and he could hardly believe it was finally happening.

As he pulled back to breathe, his eyes fluttered open for just a moment before he heard a plaintive, desperate whisper of "please" escape from Roxas's lips. He would have taken the time to be properly taken off guard by the uncharacteristically pleading tone, but Roxas's hands were in his hair now, and he was stumbling back against the wall, his tongue pushing up against Roxas's, and then it was Roxas with his back pressed to a gym locker; Axel couldn't help but let his hands wander across what seemed to have been made specifically for nothing but that purpose, soft skin and still-warm water, the sounds of their breathing heavy in each other's ears, the slick whisper of wet lips on each other, on skin, echoing around them with the murmured notes of each desperate, needy exhale until-

_Bzzzzzzt._

The boys repelled from each other in surprise as Roxas's cell phone vibrated loudly on the wooden bench beside them. They stood, facing each other, out of breath and slightly terrified until the phone buzzed its way off the edge of the bench and Roxas moved to grab it from the concrete floor.

"Yea, Mom, we're almost done, we'll be right out," he'd said, their situation cloaked under his indifferent tones.

Flipping his phone shut, his eyes slowly made their way up to meet Axel's, and after a moment like that, they both moved to dry off and get dressed, neither saying a word until Axel's hand was on the locker room door, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and he felt Roxas's hand on his arm. Turning around, he'd been caught off guard to find Roxas's lips pressed to his own one last time before the blond pushed his way out of the locker room ahead of him, already talking exasperatedly about the drill they'd worked on at practice by the time Axel caught up to him.

Over the next period of time, they never talked about whether Roxas was or wasn't gay; the one time Axel tried to bring it up, Roxas had gone into one of his moods and stomped off, so he figured he would just leave it alone and see what happened. Their showers after practice were interspersed with urgent, passionate bouts of making out over the dividers, and whenever they were alone, they became notably more affectionate toward each other, Axel slinging an arm around Roxas's shoulders as they watched a movie on the couch, Roxas stopping his homework to lick and nip at Axel's ear and neck until the redhead gave a little moan or sigh. Axel tended to be gentler and less sexual in his advances, squeezing the blond's hand under the table at dinner where no one could see, or playing idly with Roxas's hair when they sat together doing homework on his bed. Roxas, on the other hand, had never been one to walk up and give someone a hug, and he was not about to change his ways. Axel came to recognize the subtle differences between a sharp, hard kiss that meant "raging teen hormones vote that we should fool around _right now_" and a slightly less sharp, hard kiss that meant "I want to hold you, but I don't know how, so take this instead."

By the time the summer rolled around, high school looming 3 months away, Axel found himself comfortable enough in the situation to wrap his arms around Roxas and, when the blond grumbled and squirmed, say he had every right to cuddle his boyfriend if he wanted. Roxas had tensed up a bit at the word, but eventually came to accept that yes, that was what they had going on, a capital-R Relationship, and he might just be okay with that. They spent much of that summer at Roxas's house. His parents would leave for weeks at a time on business trips, and the boys would spend the day in his large, modern house alone, the nights at Axel's, where Roxas would take his familiar spot in the lumpy sleeping bag on the floor. Axel decided that summer that he couldn't think of a more liberated feeling than lying naked on an 800 dollar desk with his boyfriend's mouth around his cock, moaning as loud as he wanted, the sounds absorbed into the walls of the empty house; and Roxas found out he could get the most amazing adrenaline rush tangling his hands in Axel's hair as the redhead's tongue teased out one more intoxicating orgasm at 3 in the morning, his bare toes curling against the tiled bathroom floor, trying desperately not to make a sound as Riku slept unknowingly on the other side of the door.

As the summer progressed, their attachment to each other grew stronger, and when Axel and Riku departed with their parents for a 2-week-long family vacation to Florida, Roxas found himself dreadfully lonely, spending his days actually working on the summer reading and teaching himself every recipe from a Lasagna cookbook he'd found in the kitchen.

Axel called him a number of times during that vacation.

"I miss you," he'd say softly, watching the waves wash up on the beach, hand wrapped around a piece of sea-glass he'd found and thought Roxas might like.

"I miss you" outside on the staircase at their motel, his mother waving at him to come inside and go to sleep. "I miss you" from atop the washing machine at the Laundromat they'd found on the corner. "I miss you" in the restaurant bathroom, where he'd gone to "wash his hands" before the food got there.

"Come home," Roxas would say in response, chewing his lasagna slowly. "It's boring here alone."

When they'd finally arrived home, Axel had called Roxas to invite him over for dinner. Roxas had politely said hello to the rest of the family at the door before insisting that he and Axel go upstairs, his expression indecipherable as he led the way up to Axel and Riku's room. Axel hardly had the door closed before Roxas was upon him, and for the first time he could remember, the blond simply threw his arms around his neck and held on tight, his face buried in Axel's shoulder and his body trembling a little as Axel hugged him back.

"What's wrong?" he'd asked, alarmed at the sudden change in behavior. "Are you okay? Is everything alright?"

Roxas had pulled away then, shoving his hands into his pockets and laughing a little. "I'm glad you're back," he'd said, looking away as if he were embarrassed. When he looked up again, Axel was smiling, and Roxas allowed himself to be held again for a few minutes before settling back into his usual self and pressing Axel to the wall with a burning kiss.

As the soccer preseason started, Roxas became more and more adamant about keeping their relationship a secret. No one had found out about it, and he fully intended to keep it that way, unlike Axel, who, over the summer, had grown much more relaxed about the whole thing. He had come to accept the fact that he was gay, a concept that he found much easier to deal with in the context of having a boyfriend who made him happier than anyone else he'd ever met. Roxas, on the other hand, had only allowed one conversation on the matter towards the end of the summer.

"I don't know," he'd said, his head in his hands. "I don't know what this is. I have a lot to figure out."

"Well," Axel had said, leaning back against the wall as they sat side-by-side on Roxas's bed, "I can give you a hint. Think of it this way: you've spent the entire summer and the last couple months of the last school year in a relationship with someone, yes?"

Roxas nodded.

"And it's been a good relationship, right? You and this other person get along for the most part, and when you get in fights you get through them, and the two of you have gotten overall pretty emotionally attached to each other, right?"

Roxas nodded again.

"And on the physical end of the spectrum, you're definitely both attracted to each other, and you do a fair amount of, you know, sexual stuff. And you've enjoyed that… right?"

Roxas nodded again, staring at his feet.

"Ok, and the other person is a guy," Axel finished. When Roxas simply looked at him, he continued. "The other person is a guy, thus deeming this successful, wonderful relationship that you've been in for all this time… a gay relationship. So that, in turn, would make you…"

"I'm not gay," Roxas mumbled, shaking his head. "I'm not a faggot like Bobby."

"Bobby's a good guy," Axel said quietly. "What the guys on the team did to him was wrong, and you know it."

"Yea, it was wrong, but that's the way it _is_, don't you get it, Axel? If they find out a guy is gay, he's out, it's over. Bobby was a good fucking player, and that didn't change a goddamn thing, they turned on him the second it happened!"

"I'm gay, you gonna turn on me?"

"Shut the fuck up, Axel, you know that's different."

"How? How am I different from Bobby? How is this any fucking different-"

"It's different because I was never in love with Bobby," Roxas said desperately, turning away as Axel went silent. "Just… just do this for me, ok? I have so much shit I need to figure out, the last thing I need right now is this thing exploding all over the team. Please just do this for me."

"I don't want to," Axel muttered, picking at his fingernails.

"Please."

"Fine."

"Thank you."

As practices became more and more frequent, however, their relationship became more and more strained. Roxas's fears and insecurities infuriated Axel, whose resentment grew every time Roxas would push him away from a kiss or a hug or any kind of physical contact in a public place, regardless of whether or not anyone else was there. Alone in the locker room, he broke away from their kisses after only a few minutes, afraid that someone might walk in, and he no longer wanted the thrill of hooking up while Riku was asleep at Axel's house. When they were truly alone in the house, Roxas would finally relax, and Axel would pull him close as they watched a movie, thinking that maybe things weren't so bad – maybe this was okay. He couldn't imagine breaking up with Roxas, anyway, he loved the boy too much for that, and he was holding out under the assumption that sooner or later, Roxas would figure himself out; he would come to Axel and tell him that he'd come to terms with everything, that it was okay, that he was in love, and that they would finally have some normal sort of relationship.

One evening in the locker room after practice, Axel paused in his dressing and turned to Roxas.

"Rox, if you had to pick between me and the team, who would you pick?"

Roxas finished zipping up his pants and sighed, staring at the floor.

"I…um…"

"_Really, _Roxas?" Axel had asked, his disappointment clear in his eyes and his tone as he pulled on his sweatshirt. Stepping into his flip-flops and closing his gym locker, he looked at the other boy, hurt. "You really can't answer that?"

"Axel…"

"Shit," Axel had muttered, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and reaching for his gym bag.

"Axel-"

"Forget it," Axel had said, zipping up his gym bag. "Just forget it, that's all I needed to hear."

"Axel, wait-"

"I said forget it!"

As Axel tried to push past Roxas to leave, the blond caught his arm, pulling him into a rough kiss that pressed him back against the lockers. Dropping his gym bag and his backpack, Axel found himself kissing back harder than he ever had before, angry and hurt and still in love as he turned to push Roxas up against the lockers instead. The blond cried out a little in pain as his bare back scraped against the cold metal grating on the locker, and he worried instinctively that someone might walk in and see them. Burnt out and exhausted from the stress of it all, he let it go, crumpling a little beneath Axel's strong grip and submitting completely as Axel's tongue entered his mouth.

And then two things happened at once.

Pressed against the cold, harsh metal, Roxas felt what he was sure must have been his heart beginning to break, and in that same moment, Hayner McAdams stepped through the locker room door, his eyes widening at the scene he witnessed as about seven or eight other members of the team entered behind him, all stopping when they saw what he saw in a sort of soccer team pileup at the door.

Axel and Roxas broke apart immediately, Roxas staring in mute horror at the other members of the team and Axel looking blankly at the scene in front of him, his eyes moving slowly from Hayner to the others to Roxas.

"What the fuck?" was the first sentence spoken on the matter, coming from one of the boys still stuck in the doorway. When no one said anything, the same kid started again. "What the hell's going on?"

"Roxas," Hayner said abruptly, studying the blond's face. "Roxas, was he coming onto you?"

Axel snorted, shaking his head as Roxas simply stood where he was, petrified.

"Roxas," Hayner said again. "Are you ok? This faggot was coming onto you, wasn't he?"

"Why… why are you guys here?" was all Roxas could manage to respond, his hands shaking visibly as he leaned his weight against the locker.

"Coach said we had to move our stuff if it was in the first row of lockers, for the dance team or something," Hayner replied. "It's a good thing, too. It's a good thing we came back, huh?"

_Get it together, Roxas_.

Roxas closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, taking a deep breath and stepping away from the lockers.

"Yea, it's a good thing," he said, willing his voice not to shake. He couldn't meet Axel's eyes. "You really saved me," he said, nodding to Hayner.

"Roxas…"

This time it was Axel's voice, and as he reached out to touch Roxas's arm, the blond pushed him away.

"Get off me," he said roughly, stepping away.

"Roxas!"

"Get off me, faggot!"

The silence that followed felt almost tangible. Try as he might, Axel couldn't rip his eyes from Roxas's; the deep ocean blue seemed flat and dull now, and he could see nothing behind the wall the boy had put up. If he had been able to, he would have seen the fear and confusion, the apology and the hurt swimming behind those eyes, and maybe that would have made him feel a little better as he tried to breathe the thick, bitter air.

_**This is the sound of two hearts breaking in perfect time.**_

"I guess that answers my question," Axel said quietly, and he picked up his bags and left.

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In the days that followed, Axel had tried to convince himself he hadn't really liked soccer that much anyway, and it was ok that he'd quit the team because he didn't want to be on it in the first place.

In the weeks that followed, he'd tried to convince himself that it was okay that he didn't say anything to Roxas anymore when they passed in the hallways, because he hated Roxas anyway.

In the months that followed, he'd tried to convince himself that he didn't really wonder whether Roxas had meant what he'd said, that he didn't really wish he could hold the blond close every time he caught a glimpse of him walking by at school, that he didn't miss Roxas. _I don't miss you. I don't miss you, I don't miss you, why are you smiling? You're not allowed to be happy anymore. It's not fair._

On the last day of freshman year, he tried to convince himself that his first year of High School hadn't been a complete failure. He had become a techie, after all, and that was good. He'd made friends with Namine and Xigbar, and through them, Luxord and Kairi. He'd made out with a friend of a friend of a friend at a party over spring break, and people at school knew him as a generally friendly kind of guy, fun to hang out with and pretty nice when you really talked to him a bit.

Riku had noticed at first – the absence of Roxas at their house, the absence of happiness in Axel's spectrum of emotions. He'd asked if Axel was alright, but the redhead had been distant and snappish for a few weeks. One night, Riku woke up too cold around three in the morning. Sitting up to grab another blanket from the end of his bed, he'd been surprised to see Axel sitting up in bed, his tear-streaked face buried in a sweatshirt that Riku recognized as Roxas's – the blond had left it there on accident the last time he'd spent the night. When he looked back on the scene, he knew he should have picked up on what was going on, but at the time, he'd just fallen back asleep, vaguely confused.

Over the summer, Axel started to sneak out at night. Riku pretended not to know, but he would pretend to be asleep, really lying awake and waiting for the sound of the window opening and Axel slipping out. He would come back anywhere from three to five in the morning, changing quietly into pajamas and slipping into bed. They'd gotten into a fight one day when Riku had confronted him about it.

"It's none of your business," Axel had said, stuffing his clean laundry into his drawers.

"Sure it is, you're my brother, and you've gone all distant and weird and you're sneaking out upwards of three times a week," Riku argued, snatching a shirt he recognized as his own from the basket before Axel could put it away.

When Axel said nothing, he sighed.

"You know, you could just tell me. I dunno why you're being such a faggot about it."

Riku had hardly finished his sentence before he was stumbling backwards, Axel's fists landing hard on his face and shoulders. He'd immediately begun to fight back, and as the scuffle escalated, their yelling and crashing around drew the attention of Riku's mom, who heard it from the kitchen and decided to head upstairs.

"Shut the _fuck_ up, Riku, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about!"

_You have no fucking idea what you're talking about! _

_What the hell is wrong with you? Get the fuck away from me! _

_I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you, you have no fucking idea what you're saying. _

"Hey, hey, _hey, _what's going on?!"

Riku's mom had burst through the door, and yelling, pulled the two struggling boys apart.

"Why the _fuck_ would you say that to me?" Axel was shouting, his voice ragged as he tried to breathe. "I never wanted this! I never chose this!"

"What's going on?"

"He's completely out of his mind, Mom, we were talking and he just fucking attacked me!"

"Oh yea, we were fucking _talking_, you-you-"

Axel pulled away from both of them, stalking downstairs to grab his shoes while the others followed close behind.

"Fuck this," he muttered, searching for his shoes in the basket by the front door.

"Axel…"

Snatching his shoes from the basket, he found himself being dragged to the couch in the living room, despite his best attempts to detach Riku's mom from his arm. Riku was standing at the foot of the stairs behind the couch, and he watched with varying degrees of confusion, anger, and concern as his mom forced a sobbing Axel to sit on the couch, pulling the coffee table closer so she could sit across from him.

"What's going on, Ax?"

"I never wanted this," Axel had cried, his face contorting as he tried to breathe, sob, and shout at the same time. "I never fucking chose this, I never wanted to be like this, but I am, and I had to fucking deal with it, I had to come to terms with it, so why can't everyone else just get the fuck over it?!"

"Baby, come here, I dunno what you're talking about," she'd said, her voice soothing as she pulled the redhead close.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Axel choked out, burying his face in Riku's mom's shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with it, there's nothing wrong with me."

"Of course there isn't," she said, smoothing his hair down over and over, "Of course there isn't, Ax…"

When she looked up to give Riku a questioning glance, he simply shrugged, but suddenly, things were falling into place. After another minute of crying, Axel had dried his eyes, stood up, and apologized weakly to Riku for hitting him before retreating upstairs to their room. Riku had come up 15 minutes later to find him sitting out on the roof outside their window, smoking a joint and eating a box of chocolate covered popcorn that had been lying around their room for the past week. They hadn't had to say much; Riku knew, and Axel knew that Riku knew, and Riku was sorry. He made no mention of the joint, and Axel didn't bring it up either, trusting Riku not to tell their parents about it. After a few minutes, Axel had begun to talk, telling Riku the long, long story of all things Roxas, and from that evening on, the distance had closed between them, although Axel continued to sneak out, politely declining to tell Riku where to.

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About ¾ of the way through sophomore year, Axel could confidently say he'd long since moved on from Roxas, although he would occasionally think of something funny that Roxas had said in the past, an inside joke, or really anything that he associated with the blond, and he'd feel the tender spot where his heart had healed start to ache a little, and then he'd move on.

One of Kairi's countless friends was having a party, and Axel had agreed to go; it was in a huge house, and it seemed to Axel like their entire high school, plus some older people, college people, must have been there. He'd heard his cell phone ring and, desperate to find a quiet enough room to pick up the call, he'd wandered away from his group of friends down a hall, where he'd located a door to what he assumed to be a bedroom or a bathroom. Pushing the door open, he'd been on the verge of flipping open his phone when he'd stopped dead in his tracks, stilled by what he'd walked in on.

At first all he saw was Roxas, leaned back against the wall, his eyes squeezed shut, and then his eyes had traveled further down to Roxas's hands buried in blond hair, his jeans pushed down around his thighs and the figure on the ground recognizable as-

"Hayner," Roxas had gasped out, his knees shaking and his eyes opening slightly. As he noticed Axel, his eyes widened in shock and he looked as though he were about to say something when he choked on whatever words he was going to say, doubling over and gasping as Hayner pushed him over the edge.

Axel had taken a few shaky steps backward before he'd got a hold of himself, shaking his head and walking quickly back down the hall to where he'd come from.

_That calculating son of a bitch, he knew exactly what he was doing._

As Axel walked home from that party, he realized exactly why Hayner had pinned him as the creep the year before, choosing to help Roxas out of the sticky predicament. He couldn't help but focus, though, on something strange he'd seen in Roxas's face – for a split second before he'd closed his eyes again, he'd stared straight at Axel, and he'd looked desperately sad.

The following Monday at school, Axel was loading his Chemistry books into his backpack at his locker when he heard a familiar voice say his name. After a moment of hesitation, he turned around to face Roxas, who stood awkwardly still, letting others push past him as he stared at Axel.

"I'm not going to tell anyone, if that's why you're here," Axel had said quietly, zipping up his backpack.

"No," Roxas said, shaking his head. "I know that. I… Axel…"

Axel narrowed his eyes, watching as Roxas looked away, taking a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," Roxas said, blinking as he turned his face back to Axel. "For everything. I know I'm like, a year late, but there it is. I'm sorry."

"Good," Axel replied thoughtfully. "You should be."

And with that, he closed his locker and walked away.

On the 16th day of September in his junior year, Axel found out from his friend Namine that Roxas would be in his house again for the first time in two years. Slumped on his bed at home, he stared at the ceiling, too tired to go out for ice cream, too confused to know how to feel about the blond, and far too involved in his 17-year-old woes to put his feelings away and do something productive.

* * *

**AN:** Ay, so... flashback chapters are built for angst (as are Axel and Roxas, damn!), but there's generally going to not be huge angsting as the story progresses, so I hope no one is put off by that or anything. As my disheveled, vaguely organized outline stands, the only other solely-flashback chapter will be Chapter 4, and that one's not particularly angsty, so... yea. Sweet. I'm actually pretty happy with the way this chapter turned out, so there isn't much else for me to write here but **thanks so much for reading, and please leave a review to let me know what you thought! **XD 


	3. Blunt, And Not Very Sensitive

**AN: **Thanks so much for any and all reviews on the previous chapter, as well as a thank you to any of you who've been reading in general, or put it on your favorites, or alerts list. It doesn't go unnoticed - I really appreciate it. It's a little after one in the morning, and I'm kind of sleepy, so I can't remember what else I was going to write here. XD Please see the ending AN, though. I hope you all like this one!

* * *

"Axel, c'mon, it's been like, half an hour, would you stop moping and come out of there already?"

Axel ignored Riku's voice as it floated through the door again, closing his eyes as he exhaled a plume of delicate white smoke toward the bathroom ceiling, the doorknob rattling as his brother attempted to open the door.

"Ax, I'm serious, they're gonna be here in like, 20 minutes, and I wanted to take a shower before they got here!"

'They', of course, referred to the Jacobs family, with a side of Roxas, who were scheduled to show up in… Axel's dilated eyes slid over to the clock beside the mirror. Riku appeared to be correct in his estimate of 20 minutes.

The day had been a stressful one for Axel at school; he'd spent the entirety of lunch picking at his macaroni and cheese, and had ended up consuming 2 bottles of cherry flavored Mountain Dew and nothing else.

"Code Red," he said aloud, licking his lips before pressing the skinny joint between them again, drawing the smoke in deep and holding it.

"_Axel_, what the hell's your problem?!"

He let out a long breath, the smoke floating out in front of him again, and laughed weakly. "Riku," he said loudly, leaning his head back against the wall behind him, "Riku, did you know they call it Code Red? Mountain Dew: Code Red? The cherry stuff? I didn't know that until today. It's like a- like a warning for an earthquake or something! Ha, ha…"

The door was silent for a moment before Riku's voice came through again, his tone disgusted this time. "Are you fucking stoned?"

"Code Red!" Axel cried, laughing to himself. "Red alert, evacuate the building, Roxas fucking Casey is on his way!"

"Open the fucking door, Axel."

Axel gave another wheezing laugh, coughing a little in the smoke as he stumbled forward to the door, which he unlocked but refrained from opening. He figured he would let Riku have the honor of wrenching it open, which he did, the smoke billowing out as the stale air from their bedroom rushed into the bathroom, stinging Riku's eyes a bit as he strode inside.

"Give me that," he muttered, seizing the joint from between Axel's fingers and tossing it into the toilet. "What the hell are you thinking?"

Axel simply laughed, wrapping his arms tightly around his brother and patting him hard on the back. "You're good, you're really good, you know that? You're a good guy, Riku, a good- a-a-uhh… good _brother_."

"Well, isn't that nice? You're a fucking _moron_," he replied, glaring at Axel as he pushed him out of the bathroom. "Change your clothes, you reek of pot."

"_You_ reek, you… Riku reeks…you…" Axel said, raising his eyebrows and giggling as Riku turned on the bathroom fan and flushed the toilet to get rid of the joint. Stalking back into the bedroom, Riku leaned across Axel's bed to shove the window open, trying anything to get rid of the smell as he processed the vague disappointment that he wouldn't be able to take a shower before the Jacobs got there, and the not-so-vague disappointment in Axel for being-

"Such a fucking idiot," he murmured, turning to the redhead, who was simply standing there, watching him with that weak smile.

"Are you stupid?" he asked angrily, shoving Axel out of the way to access his dresser, where he yanked open the top drawer to find a decent shirt to wear.

"I'm not-"

"You think being high when Roxas gets here is gonna make it any better? You think our parents aren't going to notice your fucking _eyes_?" Riku snapped, hurling his shirt into the laundry basket as he unfolded a clean one from the drawer.

"I'm not stupid!" Axel said loudly, giving Riku's shoulder a hard poke in retaliation. When his brother simply turned around to glare at him, shirt in hands, Axel continued. "I'm not stupid… I'm terrified."

"Who, _you? _Axel, afraid of something? _No_," Riku retorted sarcastically, shaking his head in disgust as he pulled on the soft, black t-shirt. Axel said nothing in response, his hurt expression showing through the haze of intoxication.

"I'm not afraid of everything," he said eventually, sitting down at the edge of his bed while Riku pulled a brush through his hair a few times.

Sighing, Riku set his brush down and turned to face Axel. "Yea, so why are you afraid of Roxas, then?"

"He beat me up," Axel lamented, gesturing so widely he almost fell off the bed.

"What? When?"

"Metaphorically," he added, nodding mournfully at Riku, who cursed under his breath and set about finding a belt.

"You know, I just don't see it," Riku said, digging through another drawer. "I just don't see what's scary about sitting at the table and eating your damn spaghetti and acting polite, I mean, what are you- what are you _afraid of_, Axel? What, do you think he's going to jump up and bitch you out for being gay in the middle of dinner?"

"It's not that," Axel said, shaking his head and looking up desperately at Riku. "It's not like that, it's worse, I-Riku, he _apologized_ to me last year!"

Riku shrugged, fastening the belt he'd found and settling his pants into the right location on his hips. "And?"

"And…"

Riku, having finished dressing, now leaned against his bed-frame, studying the shaking redhead, who looked unhappy enough to be mistaken for sober, save for his over-the-top emotions, which seemed to emerge when he was in that fragile state between vaguely intoxicated and completely sober. "And…?" he said again, hoping to elicit some sort of response from his brother. "And when he apologized, you said…?"

"He said he was sorry, and I said 'Good, you should be,'" Axel said slowly, eyes glued to the floor. "And then I walked away."

"That sounds about right," Riku said, shrugging again. "So what's the problem?"

"The _problem_ is… the-the problem… Riku, I wanted him so fucking bad, that's the problem," Axel moaned, dropping his head into his hands. "He said he was sorry, and I was ready to grab him and kiss him right there, I wanted… I wanted him so, so bad right then. Every second of the past year and a half I'd spent thinking about anything but him just suddenly came back to me, right then, and I just- I… still miss him."

"You still miss him," Riku repeated slowly, studying a small scab forming over a scrape he'd gotten on the back of his hand.

"I can't get over him. I shouldn't miss him anymore, but I do. A lot. And it sucks."

Riku took a deep breath, preparing to play therapist. "Axel, of course you still fucking miss him, he's practically just as much a brother to you as I am. Except, you know, different."

"Yea, blowjobs."

"Can we not go there?"

"Sorry."

Riku paused again, watching Axel rub his eyes.

"What am I supposed to do?" Axel mumbled, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"Just relax, ok? Of course you miss him, and, in all honesty, he probably misses you just as much, if not more. The fact that he apologized says something. So tonight… just… be friendly, be open. See how it feels to be around him again, and just… go with it. I mean, you're saying you miss him, so wouldn't it theoretically be a really good thing if the two of you could be friends again?"

"I don't know if that's possible," Axel said weakly, tensing a little as he heard a car pull up outside. The two boys listened as the car doors slammed, and footsteps could be heard walking up to the house before suddenly the doorbell was ringing, and Riku's dad was calling for them to come downstairs.

"C'mon," Riku said, nodding for Axel to get up. Grabbing a can of Axe from the top of his dresser, he sprayed Axel down significantly before giving him a hearty slap on the back to wake him up and pushing him out of their room ahead of him. "You smell like you took a bath in that shit, but at least it's better than the alternative," he muttered, pushing Axel ahead again as the redhead stopped, his mother's voice echoing down the hall from the kitchen.

"Roxas, what a surprise! It's been forever since we've seen you!"

Another tentative step later, Axel was pushing back, trying to get back up the stairs as Riku blocked his way; Roxas's slightly older, matured voice greeting the slew of parents in the other room.

"I can't do this," Axel whispered, eyes wide in fear as Riku shoved him off the last step. "I can't do this, I can't do this, I-can't-do-this!"

He whispered urgently to Riku up until the moment they both pushed through the kitchen door, his voice catching in his throat as he caught sight of Roxas in the seat he'd always taken at their kitchen table, smiling at something Sora had said. Sora's parents were saying hello, but Axel wasn't really listening, because Roxas's head was turning toward him, and he thought there would be some dramatic meeting of eyes, something special, something, _anything_, but Roxas just nodded his greeting, and Axel nodded back, and he realized he was actually kind of hungry, and the spaghetti looked pretty good.

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Axel chewed each bite of spaghetti slowly, wondering if it was possible for dinner to get any more anti-climactic. Up until the second he'd actually been in the room with Roxas, he'd been impossibly nervous, but as soon as he'd gotten in there, he'd felt strangely at ease. He'd taken the spot across from the blond, Riku beside him, across from Sora, and none of them had really said very much so far; the parents had been dominating the conversation, and the four boys had pretty much stopped paying attention. Axel was attempting to cut a meatball in half with the side of his fork when he realized they were suddenly being included again.

"Boys, did you hear that?" Axel's mom was saying, "Sora's going to be in the musical!"

Sora had blushed a little, staring at his spaghetti. "Oh- it's- well, auditions are next week, so I dunno if I'll be cast or not…"

Axel raised his eyebrows. "Are you ever not cast?"

Everyone had laughed, and Sora had looked vaguely hurt, as if he felt a joke was being cracked at his expense, and Axel felt kind of bad about it, watching the brunet pick at his pasta.

"I mean, you're really good," he'd added, but no one seemed to have heard him. Turning back to his spaghetti, he pretended to be unaware of Roxas watching him, and idly listened as Riku told the others about the musical. He laughed when everyone else did, and politely answered a few questions about school from Sora's parents, settling back in his chair as the conversation seemed to hit a pause. Looking around the table, everyone else seemed to be occupied by their food, and he sat up a little, thinking maybe he'd get some more soda when Sora broke the silence.

"I'm, uh, I'm trying to convince Roxas to try out, you know, for Dig," he said, smirking at the blond, who shook his head, smiling. "I think he'd be really good."

"Oh, that would be fun, all of you could be working on the same play!" one of the moms had said, and Riku gave an exaggerated groan, eliciting a laugh from Sora's parents as he took a sip of his water.

"Don't you have soccer now?" Axel had asked, finding himself nervous after the fact as Roxas looked up at him.

"Oh, I had mono towards the end of the summer, and the doctor told me I couldn't play any sports this fall," he said, laughing a little as Riku's dad gave an "Oooh, mono" from the other end of the table.

The next few minutes forced Roxas to endure a number of parental jokes about mono being "the kissing disease" and Riku dryly noting that it was a strain of herpes, the conversation eventually dying down as the boys finished their dinner.

They found themselves being actually shooed from the table as their parents decided they wanted to have coffee and talk without their kids around, and Axel felt the awkwardness set in a little more as he stood in the living room with Roxas. Sora had disappeared to the bathroom, and Riku was putting their dishes in the sink.

"So, mono, huh?" he said idly, avoiding Roxas's eyes.

"Yea, I think it must have been from something at work, I-I really have no idea where it came from. My mom was pissed, she had to miss a business trip to stay home and take care of me. I lost, like, 20 pounds just from sleeping so much and not eating."

"I thought you looked a little skinny," Axel said, cursing himself internally directly afterwards for sounding like a creep. Fortunately, Roxas didn't seem to think so, and he laughed a little.

"Yea, I lost a bunch of muscle… It kinda sucks though, because I'm totally fine now and I can't play soccer or anything, so… yea."

"Ah… well, yea, you should try out for the play. You know, something to do… since you can't… play soccer."

"Ehh, I dunno…"

"You should," Axel said. "It'd be cool."

And then they both nodded, and went silent for a little while, looking each other up and down and eventually just _being_, until Sora appeared around the corner, shortly followed by Riku, who suggested they walk down to the drugstore a few blocks away and get sodas to pass the time.

There was only really room for one person between the refrigerated case of drinks and the long shelf of chips and beef jerky, and since Axel happened to get there first, he took it upon himself to grab the drinks, his hands immediately gravitating to the orange soda he usually got. Sora requested a Dr. Pepper, and Riku had moved off to get Red Bull from another section. Handing the Dr. Pepper over Roxas to Sora, Axel reached instinctively for another orange soda, which he placed in Roxas's hands before the blond had even opened his mouth to say what he wanted. Realizing his mistake, he tried to pull it back, but Roxas was already sort of holding onto it, and they got a bit stuck, Axel embarrassed and Roxas just kind of awkward.

"Sorry, I, um, I just figured you'd… I mean, since you always used to-"

"No, it's fine, I was gonna ask for one anyway."

"Are you sure? I mean, I can put it back, it's not a big deal."

"No, really, it's fine."

"Okay."

"Thanks."

"Yea."

Axel let the door of the fridge slide closed again, noticing Sora looking curiously between the two of them out of the corner of his eye. He wondered how much Roxas had told him, if anything, about their past, and as Riku paid for their drinks, he studied the brunet, who seemed just a little bit more real to him now that he was associated with Roxas.

Wandering back out into the cool evening air, they decided to head across the street to a park, where Sora had spotted some benches they could sit on. Upon arriving at the benches, though, Axel noticed a dilapidated soccer ball shoved underneath one and, leaving his drink with Riku, took it out into the more open area to kick around, glancing at Roxas as an invitation to join him. Roxas hesitated for a moment, watching the redhead trying to keep the ball in the air as long as possible with his knees and feet, then placed his soda on the ground and headed over, a ruthless game of one-on-one beginning as Riku and Sora settled in on a bench, eyes glued to the smooth, quick movements of the two in the field.

"So… what's the deal with them?" Sora said eventually, pulling his knees up to his chest to keep out the cold.

"Hmm? Oh, Axel and Roxas?" Riku asked, turning to face the shivering brunet. "You don't know?"

"I guess not." Sora shrugged, taking a sip of his Dr. Pepper. "Roxas never said anything about him, except when I told him we were coming over to eat dinner with you guys, he tried everything he could to get out of it. He accidentally locked himself out of his house, though, so he can't go back until Tuesday, when his parents get back."

Riku nodded slowly, raising his eyebrows as he saw Axel trip over the ball and fall over, scrambling to his feet to keep running. "Well," he said, crumpling the now-empty can of Red Bull, "They used to go out."

Sora blinked, watching Riku folding the can in half. "What do you mean?"

"You know, like… as a couple. They were together. In a hopeless spiral of 15-year-old love. You know, can't-live-without-you, be-with-you-forever, that kind of thing."

"Roxas is gay?"

Riku shrugged, shoving the deformed can into the trash can beside the bench. "Well, there's always the option of it just being an exploratory phase…" He paused for Sora to nod, then continued. "They'd been friends since they were 5. Roxas used to practically live at our house. When they broke up… it wasn't on good terms."

"What happened?" Sora asked, pulling the sleeves of his shirt over his hands in an attempt to warm his fingers.

Riku looked up, silent, then scooted a little on the bench so he could lean back a little more. "You'd have to ask one of them for that one," he said, pushing his hair out of his face. "It's not really my story to tell, you know? What I _can_ tell you is it messed Axel up pretty bad… what Roxas did to him was pretty fucked up. I was pissed about it for a while after I found out. Wanted to spit on the kid every time I saw him at school."

Sora made a sort of understanding noise, watching Roxas run out into the street after the ball, collecting it safely and kicking it over to Axel. "I can see that… getting dumped by Roxas would be… Well, he can just be a little cold sometimes. I can see how he'd really hurt someone's feelings."

Riku snorted. "A little cold, yea," he said. "I think it's safe to say this was a few steps up from 'a little cold'. That is to say… have you ever been in the Midwest in the winter? You know, where you step outside and the air is so frigid it feels like your face is on fire? It was more on that level."

"Ah."

"Yea."

Riku flexed his toes a little in his shoes, vaguely bored as he noticed Sora actively shaking beside him, his teeth chattering and his nose bright red. He didn't appear to have a jacket, wearing only a thin, long-sleeved black shirt and dark brown cargo pants, and he'd pulled his legs up onto the bench so he was sitting sort of curled up, hugging himself and giving Riku a weak smile as he noticed him looking.

"Speaking of cold," he said jokingly, his chattering teeth interrupting his speech.

"You want this?" Riku asked, gesturing to his sweatshirt as the brunet appeared to be weighing his options.

"Won't you get cold without it?"

"I'll be fine. You look like you're about to pass out, here…"

Unzipping the light gray sweatshirt, he handed it to Sora, who wrapped it eagerly around his shoulders, slipping his arms into sleeves that were too big on him and pulling the hood over his head. He seemed to disappear inside of it, sinking into the warmth with a sniff, a sigh, and a murmur of "Ah, thanks."

"Yea, I warmed it up for you," Riku said, folding his arms as the brisk air hit bare skin and hoping Axel and Roxas might decide to be done soon. After all, he thought, it was getting pretty dark. The street lights had turned on for the night, and Sora was sniffing again beside him.

"You probably think I'm pretty lame, huh?"

Riku raised his eyebrows, turning with mild confusion to the brunet, who was staring out at him resentfully from behind feathery bangs.

"Uh… no, not really," he replied, wondering what he might have done to provoke the accusation.

"Or that I'm some kind of stupid goody-two-shoes."

"No?"

"With perfect grades, who does everything his parents say and hasn't got any problems ever."

"Um…"

"Blissfully clueless and gay," Sora finished bitterly, glaring at his knees.

Riku was speechless for a moment, groping around in his brain for the correct thing to say. "Uh… to be honest, Sora, I really don't think much about you at all. I think you're nice, but, um… I don't know you enough to pass any judgment."

Sora looked a little taken aback, as if he'd expected Riku to agree with everything he'd said, and he, too, stumbled on his words for a moment before speaking.

"Good," he said with conviction, pulling the sweatshirt tighter around him. "Because I'm not like that! I don't listen to everything my parents say, and I'm not naïve, and my only A's are in Music and Theatre classes!"

"Okay?"

"I get mostly B's, and I'm failing History because I hate reading about everyone dying in wars, so I never got the questions right on the tests because… because I didn't like to think about all those people dying…" he finished lamely, glaring at Riku as if the silver-haired boy had been the one to accuse him of these things.

"So don't think about them," Riku said slowly, watching the anger slowly diminish from Sora's eyes. After another moment of staring at each other, Sora's gaze returned to his knees, and he appeared deep in thought.

"You're kind of creeping me out," Riku said bluntly, a cool breeze raising the hairs on his arms. "Are you ok?"

"Sorry," Sora replied, his now sullen expression revealed as he looked up again at Riku. "It's just annoying. When people think that. Which they usually do."

"I never said I thought any of those things."

"I've known you for like, 10 years," Sora said suddenly, scooting his feet back onto the ground and picking up his Dr. Pepper to take a sip.

"And?"

"And you guys never talk to me, so I figured you didn't like me, and that was the only reason I could think of for why," Sora explained, tightening the cap on the bottle before setting it down on the bench between them.

Riku snorted. "It's not like you're particularly talkative either. I don't _not_ like you, but I don't particularly… _like_ you, per se…"

Sora's expression managed to become even more dismal, and he pulled his legs back up onto the bench, sitting sideways and cross-legged so he could look at Riku without his neck cramping up. "Why don't you like me?" he asked, his voice small from inside the large, gray hood. "Did I do something?"

"No Sora, you didn't _do anything_, I just don't _know you_, so no, I'm not going to lie and say I like you, because honestly, I have no way of even _knowing_ if I like you," Riku said exasperatedly, feeling strangely defensive as the brunet fixed his eyes on him.

"You're very blunt," Sora said eventually, fingering the edges of the sweatshirt's sleeves.

"I guess."

"And not very sensitive," he observed, nodding to himself. After another silence, interrupted only by the sounds of Roxas and Axel's soccer game, he spoke again. "You really have _no opinion_?"

"No."

"None at all? No thoughts?"

"Nope."

"_Really?_"

"Really."

"How is that _possible_?" Sora asked incredulously, studying Riku's face with interest.

"I just don't, ok? I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings or something, but no, I don't have any opinions on you, it's not like I lay in bed at night thinking about you or-or writing in a diary, you know, 'Dear Diary, my opinion on Sora today is that he's nice.' I mean, come on, it's not like _you_ have any opinions on me, either."

"No, I have an opinion," Sora piped up, holding up a finger to interrupt Riku. "I have a thought. About you."

"And what is that?" Riku asked, throwing his arms open in frustration. "What is Sora Jacobs' opinion of me?"

"I think you're blunt, and not very sensitive," Sora said, smiling.

Riku blinked a few times, studying the now grinning face before him.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he muttered, turning to look over at Axel and Roxas as he heard Sora start to laugh. When the brunet just kept laughing, he turned back to face him, and found it hard not to start laughing as well; Sora's eyes had gone all squinty and his smile took up a good deal of his face, his upper body shaking with the light, free laughter.

"You're very funny," he choked out, smiling at Riku, who let out a half-hearted exhaled laugh, the corners of his mouth turning up inexplicably as he watched Sora.

Shaking his head, he looked away, then up again, and Sora was gulping in air, his laughter slowing but his smile still intact as he unscrewed the cap on his soda again to take a drink.

"Do you like Dr. Pepper? You can have some, if you want," he said, the last little hiccups of laughter leaving his mouth as he held the bottle out to Riku.

"I've never had it," was Riku's reply, and, at Sora's insistent urging, he took a measured sip, his face contorting as he handed the bottle back. "That is possibly-" (Sora began to laugh again) "-the most… _revolting_-" (Sora's eyes were getting squinty again) "thing I have _ever_ tasted in my entire life."

Shaking his head again at the giggling boy, he stood up. "Come on, we're going back. I'm freezing my ass off, and I think I need to vomit, that was so disgusting."

When Sora made no moves to stand up, he took the boy's arm, gently pulling him off of the bench, and he waved at Axel and Roxas to join them as they headed back to the house.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday afternoon saw the first day of auditions for the musical; the rest of the weekend had been uneventful for Axel and, while he spent much of Saturday thinking about Roxas and lazing around the house, he'd been forced to work on an English paper the entire day on Sunday, eliminating any time he would have spent with his friends. Namine had called to see how dinner had gone, but his mother had actually plucked the phone from his hands, telling his friend that Axel was busy, and he couldn't talk because an English paper that makes up the difference between a C- and C+ in the class is a good one to do well on. During Tech Theatre, Tifa had put him in charge of teaching 3 freshman girls how to use every saw in the shop, and by the time he'd coaxed the last one, a small girl wearing far more pink than Axel was sure he was comfortable with, over to the table saw, the bell had rung, and he had 15 minutes to go collect the books he'd need for his homework that night before auditions would begin.

Now, striding back into the theater with his backpack heavier than ever, he scanned the groups of potential cast members, looking for, if not Roxas, at least Sora. Finally locating the brunet, he dropped his backpack at the theater door and headed down to where he was sitting, about to tap him on the shoulder when he saw something even better. A few feet away, Kairi was studying her script, an intensely focused look on her face, and who should be next to her but Roxas, reading vaguely over her shoulder with his hands in his pockets, looking slightly nervous but mostly just out of place. When the blond caught sight of Axel, he raised a hand and bowed his head a little in his usual nod-and-kind-of-wave greeting, and after waving back, Axel turned to Sora, nudging his shoulder to get his attention.

"Jacobs," he said solemnly, squatting down to see the brunet at eye level. "Good work."

Sora looked utterly surprised to find Axel actually talking to him of his own accord, and he smiled when he realized what Axel was referring to. "He didn't come because of me," he said, his knowing grin mildly disconcerting.

Axel narrowed his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

But Sora didn't have time to respond; Leon was calling his name, and he stood up abruptly, shooting Kairi and Roxas a wide grin and giving Axel a thumbs up before heading over to the stage. Kairi waved briefly at Axel, having looked up from her script, but before he could get particularly involved in conversation with her, she'd placed a finger in her ear, singing a part softly to herself and attempting to block out the noise around her.

Having gathered all the information he needed on the status of Roxas's audition, Axel turned to leave the house, grabbing his backpack on the way out and heading up the stairs in the lobby to the booth, where both the lighting and the sound boards were kept, along with all the rest of the sound equipment (cd player, tape player, minidisk player, microphones, mic stands, mic cables, wireless mics, mixers, equalizers, pre-amps, body mics, a new SFX machine, recording equipment, speakers, speaker stands, batteries, etc…). Entering, he found Namine seated in her usual rolling chair at the light board, talking to Xigbar, who had pulled up another chair beside her. Further along, Riku sat at the one free space between boards on the counter, flipping through a script as he talked to-

"Zexion!"

Axel's eyes brightened as he spotted his friend stationed on a tall, spindly chair amongst the sound equipment.

"What are you doing here? You look awful comfy… does this mean what I think it means?"

Zexion nodded, gesturing vaguely in Riku's direction. "Riku tracked me down and asked me if I'd be interested in working sound with you guys… I would have said no, but my advisor was right there, and he was thrilled at the prospect of some good old school related extracurriculars…"

"It's perfect, I can't believe I didn't think of it," Axel said, pushing Riku's script off of the counter and sitting down in its place. "I mean, you know how all this stuff works, right?"

Zexion nodded again, dislodging a pair of enormous headphones from beneath the hood of his sweatshirt and fitting them over his ears, thus ending their conversation. Axel simply watched, strangely impressed, as the small boy opened up his laptop, which he'd wired to all of the theater's sound equipment, and set to work; on what, Axel couldn't even begin to guess. Zexion had always been a little enigmatic – Axel hadn't even originally met him at school, but rather, at a club called the Hot Box; the club he'd been sneaking out to since the summer after freshman year. Zexion was a DJ there, and a damn good one, if Axel had anything to say about it. As always, fascinated both by the slim boy's ability to look good in gigantic headphones and that hard, determined expression he got when he was working on something, Axel had to literally shake his head a bit and blink purposefully to take his eyes off of him, turning to Riku instead.

"So… auditions. Guess who I saw down there?"

"Roxas," Riku said disinterestedly, jotting down a note for a cue in his script, then highlighting it with the bright orange he used to indicate a sound cue.

"What, did you go down there and look or something? How did you-"

"Who else would you be talking about, Kairi?" Riku asked, flipping to the next page. "Honestly, Axel."

Axel shrugged, unsure of why Riku seemed to be so cranky, and he noted with loose indifference that an unfamiliar blond boy seemed to be making conversation with Namine and Xigbar.

Said blond boy was, in fact, having a good deal of trouble getting noticed, regardless of the fact that he'd been standing beside Namine for a good minute and a half.

"Ahh, um… ex-excuse me," he'd said meekly, not wanting to interrupt anything important. "Excuse me, I- um… h-hi, I… um… hello?"

Unfortunately, the girl hadn't looked up, carrying on a deeply involved conversation with the gray-haired boy beside her, gesturing and sighing and shrugging, her issues revolving around someone named "Marly".

"Excuse… excuse me," he'd said again, touching the girl lightly on the shoulder, an action that caused her to finally look up, fixing a critical glare on him.

When she said nothing, the boy launched into the introduction he figured he must have performed at least, oh, five thousand times in the past two weeks. It never seemed to get any less nerve-wracking.

"Um, hi, I'm Demyx, um, I'm new here, at-at the school, and my advisor told me I should, um, I should join the crew here, so… um, I was just wondering if there's anyone I should talk to, or um, anything I should, ah, anything I should be doing…"

When the girl simply continued to stare at him, he thought perhaps she was waiting for him to say more, so he attempted to make conversation, gesturing to the light board behind her. "Um, wow, lots of, uh, lots of wires and knobs and switches, it, uh, it looks pretty complicated, heh… I've never done any of this before, so um, it's pretty exciting…"

At the mention of "complicated wires and knobs", the girl closed her eyes, looking as though she were willing herself not to say something cruel, and turned in her chair back to the boy she'd previously been talking to, whose hair was pulled into a long ponytail that hung down the back of his chair.

"So, like I was saying, I dunno what to tell Kai, because he just keeps _hitting_ on me, and I mean, I _like_ Marly, really, so… I think I'll just… not tell her. Does that make sense?"

The boy nodded, and Demyx, deeply disheartened, gave a nervous laugh, taking a few steps further into the booth towards the three boys sitting at the other end. One in particular caught his eye, a slender boy seated on a tall chair at the very end, headphones clamped onto his ears, long-ish silver hair falling in his eyes as he moved a slider on the board slowly higher. The other two boys were engaged in a casual conversation, and after his first bout of stinging rejection, Demyx was hesitant to try initiating conversation again. Instead, he chose to stand awkwardly where he was, watching the boy with the headphones work until finally, he noticed the boy with bright red hair gesturing for him to come over.

Taking shaky steps over to the two, he smiled anxiously, fidgeting with the edges of his pockets as he introduced himself again.

"Um, hi, I'm… Demyx, and I'm new here, and I was told that if I want to join the crew, I should come up here and talk to, um, I-I forget what the name was, um, something with an R, Ricky, or-or Randy, or-"

"Riku?" the redhead drawled, a slight smile creeping across his face.

"Ah! Yea, that was it!" Demyx said quickly, feeling his face grow hot as the silver-haired boy with the script let out a long sigh. "Um, are you… are you Riku?"

The redhead snorted, scooting forward a little to sit at the edge of the counter. "I wish," he said jokingly, kicking the script from the other boy's hands. "_Riku_ would be the one now fumbling idiotically for his script."

"What the fuck, Axel?" Riku muttered, shooting the redhead a dark look as he picked the script up off the ground, the pages now bent. Turning his head in Demyx's direction, he studied the blushing, mohawked blond for a moment before sighing again and turning back to his crumpled script, flipping back to the page he had been at before.

"We're brothers," the redhead said, smirking.

Demyx attempted to swallow the lump of spit he'd seemed to have accumulated in his throat, eyes moving back and forth between the two boys in front of him. The boy with the sound equipment pulled the headphones from his ears for moment, rolling his chair backwards and fishing out a short cord from the disorganized bin beside his backpack. As he turned back to his laptop and the board, his eyes landed momentarily on Demyx, blinking indifferently and moving on.

Demyx was on the verge of attempting a wave when he felt a large hand clap him on the shoulder, and he jumped a little as the redhead hopped off the counter, giving him a hard look before patting his shoulder again and speaking.

"I'm Axel," he said, nodding with conviction.

From outside of the booth, a call for "Roxas Casey" could be heard, and Axel seemed to perk up a little at that, his hand still resting on Demyx's shoulder as he responded.

"I'll tell you what – I gotta run down and see this audition, but come with me. We'll talk, yea? Me and Riku aren't blood related or anything, so the douchebag genes are strictly his."

"Wow, you're so clever," Riku deadpanned, his eyes still glued to his script as Axel let out a self-amused laugh and led the new kid out of the booth.

"So you wanna be a techie, huh?" Axel observed, raising an eyebrow at Demyx as they traipsed down the stairs to the lobby.

"Ah, well, my advisor said I should come check the theater out and see if it seemed like something good to do. He, um, he said that he thought I'd fit in pretty well with the tech kids," Demyx said uncertainly, relieved to be with someone who would actually speak to him.

Stopping outside the doors to the house, Axel turned the blond to face him and looked him up and down. "Well, let's see," he said, examining the shy figure in front of him. "Socially awkward, unconventionally cute, homosexual… seems about right."

Demyx felt his face get even redder than it had previously been, eyes widening as he stuttered out a protest. "I-um- how did you-"

"Oh, come on, kid, did you think you were being discreet?" Axel asked, giving the mortified blond a sympathetic look. "Listen – it takes one to know one, eh?"

"You're-"

"Yes," Axel said abruptly, ushering Demyx into the house ahead of him and leaning against the back wall, eyes on the blond who appeared to be reading lines for Leon at the edge of the stage. Demyx took up a spot beside him, and waited patiently as the redhead considered the situation on the stage. Eventually, Axel turned to him again, and Demyx tensed a little under his intense gaze.

"Don't feel bad about it or anything," Axel finally said, shrugging. "To be honest, I wouldn't have known if it weren't for the fact that you practically creamed yourself looking at Zex."

"I-"

"Straight guys don't look twice at the kid – to them, he's just another scrawny piece of shit who thinks he's smart. But man! He's really something, isn't he?"

Before Demyx could respond, Axel was talking again, the scrutiny gone from his now friendly expression.

"Where you from, anyway?" he asked, poking Demyx lightly in the chest. "Tan," he noted, impressed.

"Umm, originally or just now?"

Axel shrugged. "Both? Neither?"

"Um, well…" Demyx bit his lip, preparing to recite the long list of place he'd lived. "I was born in Chicago, and then moved to Minnesota, then New York, Miami, Memphis, Denver, L.A., and now here."

"Jeez, really?"

Demyx nodded, hands dug into his pockets, and he avoided Axel's penetrating gaze by staring at the floor.

"So that's an average of like, a little over two years in any given place."

"Yea…"

After another moment without conversation, Axel slung an arm around the other boy, casting one more glance in Roxas's direction before pulling Demyx back into the lobby. "Listen, I'll set you up to work sound with Zex, alright? You're not tone-deaf or anything, are you?"

"No, I-um, I play music," Demyx said quickly, stumbling over his words in his eagerness.

"Band geek?"

"No, no, I play guitar," he said, eyes brightening at the prospect of a conversation topic he actually knew something about. "And sing, and, you know, write songs."

"Yea?"

"Yea."

Axel paused at the foot of the stairs, regarding the blond with interest. "Zex would like that. Not that he'd ever say it, or anything, but… well…"

"What?"

Axel shrugged, continuing up the stairs to the booth. "Zexion's kind of closed off," he explained. "He's a good guy, though, and once he gets kind of comfortable with you, he'll be friendly enough. Thing is, if you act all shy and gawky, you know, like you are now, it's gonna take a lot longer for him to warm up to you."

"Oh, are you two friends?"

"Ehh, you know. To an extent. Yea, I guess we are. Any relationship with Zex is kind of complicated since he's so… you know. The way he is. He's not so much cold or unfriendly as… self-sufficient. He doesn't need anyone else, so if you're gonna be friends with him, it's more of a Him Tolerating You Until He Gets Used To You And Then Kind Of Grudgingly Liking You thing than a normal friendship," Axel said, taking another pause at the top of the stairs to lean against the railing. "You have to either be around him a lot, or have some kind of… event, before he'll let you close."

"Oh," Demyx said, his apprehension growing as he spotted the boy in question through the booth window. "Um… well, what do you mean by being around him a lot, like… I mean… were you in a class with him or something?"

"Oh, me and him? We had an event," Axel said, grinning. "When we first met. Not at school."

Demyx raised his eyebrows, interested. "How'd you meet?"

Axel sighed dramatically, looking over the balcony at the stage, where Roxas was still reading lines for Leon. "You really wanna know?" he asked, turning back to Demyx, who nodded.

"Yea."

"It's a _looong_ story," Axel warned.

When Demyx simply gave him an eager look, he sighed again.

"Alright, siddown. This might take a while…"

* * *

**AN:** Why yes, that is a lead-in to another flashback chapter. XD Note: This is not going to become a huge pattern - it's not going to be a regular/flashback/regular/flashback sort of thing, or anything. Just a couple at the beginning, and it'll settle down a bit. Speaking of settling, the first few updates have been pretty quick, due to it being Spring Break for me now. Sadly, school starts again this Tuesday, so updates most likely won't be so quick. I'll try to make them weekly, but some updates may take a bit longer. That's pretty normal though, so no worries I suppose. XD Anyways, I'm massively tired and have been listening to Iron & Wine for the past hour, which isn't exactly conducive to awakeness, heh. **Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you all liked the chapter! Please don't hesitate to leave a review and let me know what you thought; feedback is always appreciated!**


	4. Good Kids

**AN: **Thanks so much for all the reviews on the previous chapter! Breaking 100 was a cool thing, so, yea, thanks so much, guys! Also, for reading, or adding to your faves or alert lists! I always get all excited, hahaha. XD One quick note to a non-logged in reviewer:  
**Sushi-chan: **Thanks so much for the reviews - One thing is that the reviews and PMs on ffnet delete URLs and email addresses. I would love to see the art that you did though, so if you've got the time, it'd be awesome if you could send me those links in an email! (My email is there on my profile.) Thanks!

Anyways, thanks so much all, for reading and reviewing and all, and I hope you like this chapter!

* * *

_"Alright, siddown. This might take a while…"_

Axel wasn't sure why, but that night, the DJ caught his eye. He'd never really _looked_ at him before, after all, just seen swinging silver bangs and a gently swaying body out of the corner of his eye as he twisted and turned on the dance floor, too involved in the intoxicating motion, the sticky-sweet smell of sweat and hairspray, expensive cologne, bodies whispering past his own and hands ghosting up his sides. The kid could spin, there was no doubt about it, but that was just it – he was a _kid_. Axel had never noticed another kid there before; certainly no one so _small_. Chewing on his toothpick at the bar, he waited the five minutes until 2:00 when the DJ would change and watched intently as the kid slid onto the last barstool at the opposite end of the bar, exchanging sparse words with Rinoa, the bartender.

Rinoa had spotted Axel as a minor the very first time he'd come to the club, despite his convincing fake ID. She'd given him a knowing look and a wink as she slid his shot across the bar, and had, over time, insinuated herself into his life as a sort of older sister figure. Every time he came, she'd make sure to interrogate him about school and life before allowing him to drink, and once he'd drank a bit, she'd shoo him off to the dance floor, giving him a little wave and smile if he looked back.

Tonight, she filled a thin glass of white wine, leaning across the bar to speak to the DJ and shaking her head when he pulled a crumpled wad of cash from his pocket to pay. Axel could barely hear her tinkling laugh over the music of the new DJ, and as he saw her move away again, he stood up to approach the kid.

He wasn't dressed like the other DJ's, or most of the people dancing, wearing a pair of black jeans that had long since faded to gray and a worn black hoodie, only zipped about halfway to reveal a plain, white t-shirt. The soles of his old Adidas tennis shoes were starting to come apart as well, the thin rubber peeling away from the toes, any grooves for traction smoothed away from constant use. His headphones rested around his neck, mostly hidden by his hair, which fell in large sections across half of his face, and the cord disappeared somewhere into the depths of his sweatshirt. He took no notice as Axel took the stool beside him, either ignoring the redhead's pointed gaze or simply too lost in his own thoughts to realize he was being watched.

After another minute of silence, Axel spoke, nodding a little to greet the kid when he finally looked up.

"Hey."

The DJ narrowed his eyes, turning back to his wine to take another measured sip.

"I saw you up there. You know, earlier."

When he received no response, Axel sighed, finally removing the now soggy toothpick from between his lips and dropping it into the decrepit ashtray on the bar.

"You're pretty good," he continued, staring unfazed at the other boy, who grudgingly turned toward him, his wary glare now flicking up and down Axel's body.

"I know," he said eventually, his voice guarded and disinterested.

"Better than this guy," Axel added, gesturing to the 20-something hipster now manning the music. "And he's probably much older than you, too. How old are you, anyway, 15?"

The boy's glare sharpened, and he took another deliberate sip of his wine, turning to fix his gaze on the bottles behind the bar.

"Older? 16? 16, tops."

After a moment of pause and another drawn-out sip, the boy stood up. "I'm 17," he said coldly, and, after delicately picking his wine glass off the bar, he strode purposefully away.

Axel turned to follow his movements, watching as he found a spot on the wall to lean against, although he appeared to be having a fairly severe coughing fit as he reached his destination, taking another drink and rubbing his throat a bit when he'd finished. Axel waited a moment, unsure of whether or not he should pursue it any further, then stood, straightening out his jeans (and, admittedly, inching them down a bit lower on his hips) before sauntering nonchalantly over to where the silver-haired boy stood.

"I'm 17 too," he said bluntly, plucking the glass from the boy's fingers and downing about half of what was left in it before it was snatched back angrily. "The name's Axel," he said, smirking as he held out a hand to the furious boy. "And you are?"

"Fuck you," the other boy spat, or rather, he _would have_ spat, had he not lapsed into another coughing fit mid-word, the glass slipping from his fingers as he doubled over and spinning in slow circles on the ground as he slid down the wall.

Axel stood by patiently until he was done coughing, watching with interest as he straightened up and cleared his throat.

"You might want to lay off the smokes, DJ."

"I don't smoke cigarettes," the boy retorted. He gave Axel one last glare before stepping away from the wall and making his way into the crowd on the dance floor without looking back.

If there was one thing Axel hated, it was leaving loose ends, and he was not about to let this one go. Weaving through the mass of dancing bodies, he searched the faces for those sharp, pointed features until he finally located the boy, a taller, dark-haired man grinding against him, his hands sliding up and under the edges of that tattered sweatshirt. Determined to get the boy's attention, he slipped into the fray behind the man, his long fingers snaking across the man's hips and gently moving him away from the young DJ. By the time the kid had realized what was happening, the dark-haired man had taken the hint from Axel and had turned away from him completely, now draping an arm across Axel's shoulders, dragging a hand through the soft, red spikes as they danced.

Infuriated, the DJ moved to scoot between them, and, intrigued by the sudden competition over him, the man stepped back enough to put himself equidistant from both of them. As they both moved in, he began to slowly realize that their fierce competition had nothing to do with him; it didn't matter who they were competing for, the two just wanted to beat each other. Slowly but surely, he inched away from them, until finally, he moved freely away – Axel had snaked an arm around the smaller boy, and their anger had transformed into a fierce, close grind, the silver-haired boy's hands clinging to Axel's hips, sides, finally shoulders as the redhead pushed him off the dance floor and up against the wall, their lips crashing together as the colored lights roved across them and past them.

Axel dove in without hesitation, breathing heavily between kisses as he tasted the wine on the other boy's tongue, and almost refusing to stop until he realized the small boy was coughing again. He took the opportunity to catch his breath, holding the boy up as he collapsed once again, strangely comforted by the feeling of another body leaning so fully against his.

"Damn! You gonna be ok?"

After a few shallow, wheezing breaths, the boy steadied himself against the wall, looking away in what could easily have been embarrassment. "I just… have a little cold, is all." Leaning his head back against the wall, he took a shaky breath, squeezing his eyes shut as the bright lights spun past them once again.

"Man, you're not lookin' so good. How 'bout I take you home, alright? I promise I'm not a creep or anything, but I swear, you look like you're about to pass out. You're ghostly pale."

"Can't go home," the boy muttered, staring at his shoes. Impatient, he fisted his hands in Axel's shirt and pulled the redhead's face back to his own, their lips colliding as a louder song filled the air around them. Axel's hands hung helplessly at his sides for a moment as he considered protesting, but as the smaller boy let out a soft sigh between kisses, he gave in again, supporting the frail boy with his arms until he pulled away once more to cough.

Axel hesitated, regarding the boy silently for another moment as he tried to figure out what to do. "What's your name, anyway?" he asked, stalling a little as he thought about whether or not it would be completely creepy to offer to take the kid to his house for the night. He wasn't sure how he'd hide him from Riku, and in the morning, his parents, but he felt bad leaving a cute DJ his age to die of pneumonia in a hot, stuffy club.

The boy also seemed to be considering his options. After another moment of silence between the two, he gave up, digging his hands into his pockets as he spoke. "Zexion."

"No last name?"

The glare Axel received in response told him he wouldn't be learning a last name just yet, and he let out a sigh as his hands, too, found the pockets of his jeans. "Axel Elliot… Let me take you home. To my place, that is. I promise you, I'm not a rapist or anything. You can ask Rinoa if you'd like. Oh! And I can show you my student ID from school, if that helps," he added, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and extracting his high school ID. "See, I practically live in the goddamn suburbs. I go to Colebury High, and my picture, as usual, makes me look like a 5th grader."

Examining the student ID, Zexion pulled a ratty, leather wallet from his pocket as well, pulling out his own. "I go to Colebury too," he said slowly, comparing the insignias on the cards, which were, as anyone could have guessed, identical. Narrowing his eyes, he snatched Axel's wallet to look at the rest of the cards it held.

Axel shrugged. "Not much to see. Driver's license, Starbucks, Blockbuster, library, 5 different punch cards to the same pizza place… the usual."

"You have a Starbucks card?" Zexion asked skeptically, studying the artsy design on the card.

"Jeez, that's the most you've said all night," he replied, gently taking his wallet back and replacing his cards. "In any case, I'm addicted to the chocolate covered coffee beans they sell there…"

Having confirmed that the redhead was, in fact, 17 from his driver's license, and that they went to the same school, Zexion grudgingly nodded, stepping away from the wall. "I'll go with you. But you better not pull anything weird. You'll regret it if you do."

Grinning, Axel ushered the other boy ahead of him to the door. "What, you gonna pull a knife on me or something?"

He heard the quick swish of metal only a second before he saw the glint of light on the switchblade in Zexion's hand, and he held up his own hands in peace as he stumbled backwards out the door. "Alright, alright! Jeez, you really go out prepared, huh?"

The look of mingled fear and surprise on Axel's face managed to morph into something more along the lines of impressed, and as they boarded the 2:25 bus, Zexion actually cracked a smile, slumping onto the cold, plastic seat beside Axel and trying not to look at the other passengers.

Axel, on the other hand, loved to look at whoever else was on the bus this time of night, and tonight was no exception. A tall, thin man was sleeping in the very back, and an older woman sat at the very front with a stern expression on her face. A few others were scattered throughout the middle of the bus, but they were younger and wary, as everyone is on the bus at 2:30 in the morning, and Axel decided it might be better not to stare.

The two made quiet conversation for most of the ride – Axel found out that yes, Zexion's mom had kicked him out of the house, although he hadn't been able to find out why. They were in the same grade at school, and had the same English teacher, but had English at different class periods, so they'd never actually seen each other. Axel was surprised to find that after a little while, Zexion opened up a bit, and he managed to get a couple of full sentences at a time from the boy until they both reached a point in the conversation where it felt right to just sit quietly for a while.

By the time they got off to switch buses further out, they were the last people on the bus, the silence peppered with Zexion's occasional bursts of coughing, and on the second leg of the trip, the smaller boy drifted in and out of sleep, finally staying asleep when his head found a resting place on Axel's shoulder.

Eventually they reached the stop closest to Axel's house, by which time it was almost 3:00, and after pulling the cord to alert the driver of a stop, he gently shook the other boy awake with a quiet "We're here."

The few blocks they had to walk went slower than usual; Zexion was lagging and had to stop to cough a few times, and when they stopped in front of the large, blue-gray house, Axel was almost afraid that the other boy wouldn't be able to climb up to his room. Nudging Zexion's arm, he gestured to the sturdy little apple tree in the front yard.

"You'll have to climb that, onto the roof, there. Not the actual roof, just the roof of the first floor where it sticks out past the second floor. See the window? The one that's open a little bit? That's my room. Try to be quiet though, ok? I share a room with my brother, and it'll be a bitch to explain you away if we wake him up."

Zexion nodded, and after a moment of evaluating the tree, began to climb. When he reached the roof, he turned around, waiting for Axel to join him before they approached the window together. Holding a finger to his lips to silence Zexion, Axel slowly pushed the window open, and after Zexion had climbed in onto his bed, he followed, closing and locking the window behind them. Silently, the two took their shoes and jackets off, and Axel changed into sweatpants, offering a pair of too-big plaid pajama pants to Zexion. They were comically large on the boy's tiny frame, and Axel found the little DJ to actually be legitimately cute, the extra fabric flopping around his feet as he curled up in Axel's bed. The redhead managed to climb over him onto his bed as well, and as he'd drifted to sleep, he'd draped one arm around the other boy, smiling to himself as he felt the other's body press back against his.

A few hours later, Riku woke up, and the trouble began.

Axel awoke that morning to find his brother standing over him, his cheek stinging where he'd been slapped awake.

"Get up," had been Riku's harsh whisper, dragging Axel out of bed over a still-sleeping Zexion, who sniffed and rolled over, but didn't wake up. Stumbling into the bathroom, not entirely conscious, Axel had realized that perhaps he should have thought a little harder before taking the boy home to sleep in his bed. He leaned against the closed bathroom door, avoiding Riku's stare, but was eventually forced to respond when Riku spoke.

"Who the hell is that?"

"Zexion," Axel said blearily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "He's a… friend."

"From where?" Riku hissed, smacking Axel's hands away from his face. "He better not be a fucking hooker, I know you went out last night!"

Axel snorted. "He's not a hooker," he said slowly, "he's a DJ."

Before Riku could respond with another snide comment, Axel continued.

"He's sick, ok? He couldn't go home, and he needed someplace to stay, so I said I'd put him up here."

Riku was silent, thinking over the information Axel had given him and staring blankly at the door. "He looks like he's 14."

"He's 17. He goes to our school."

"Sure, 17, ok," Riku muttered, leaning against the sink. After a moment, he looked up. "Did you fuck him?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"What?" Riku said, shrugging, "I dunno what you do when you're gone, I dunno where you go, I dunno how the fuck you're meeting weird kids from school in the middle of the night, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're not going to a fucking youth group-"

"It's just a club, alright?" Axel said sharply, leaning his head back against the door.

"A club."

"A gay club," he said, sighing. "It's a fucking gay club. Happy?"

"And at that gay club, you…"

"Dance," Axel said. "You dance. And drink. On second thought, it's not so much a gay club as an… open… club."

"Open?"

"It's not like, specifically a gay club. It's just a club that a lot of gay people go to."

Riku blinked. "I don't really care if it's a gay club or not. All you've been doing is dancing?"

Axel nodded.

"And you couldn't tell me this?"

"It's really not any of your business, is it?"

"Sure it is. And if it wasn't before, it became my business the second I woke up and found myself staring across the room at some creepy 14-year-old in my brother's bed."

"He's not 14!"

"How the fuck are we gonna get him out of the house without anyone seeing?"

Axel sighed. "I think he needs to rest. He's pretty sick. I say, no-no-don't interrupt me, just listen! I say, we get ready for school. If he's not awake by the time we need to get out of here, I'll wake him up a little, tell him to stay in our room for the day and sleep, I'll leave a sandwich or something up here, and when we get home from school, you can distract any parents that might be around – it's your mom's day off today, isn't it? You can distract her, and I can run upstairs, and then we can pretend he's just a friend from school who came home with me, and, um… and figure out what to do from there. But at least we won't have to hide him, then."

"…what if he makes noise?"

"He won't make noise," Axel said, turning the doorknob. "He'll just sleep. He's sick."

Opening the door, he let Riku leave the bathroom first, and the two stood, studying the sleeping boy for a moment before each moving off to get dressed. By the time they'd finished breakfast, there was hardly time to run back upstairs before leaving, and Axel found Zexion still sleeping, curled up into a ball under his blankets.

Riku dropped off a hastily fabricated peanut butter and jelly sandwich before heading downstairs to wait, and Axel sat down on his bed, gently shaking the boy awake.

"Hey," he said softly, watching Zexion's eyes blinking open and taking in their surroundings. "Listen, I gotta go to school, but you can stay here for the day, alright? Get your sleep. If you get hungry, there's a sandwich, but please, please, _please_ don't leave this room. Got it? Stay in here, door closed, don't make noise. My brother's mom is gonna be home, so… if you hear footsteps in the hall, stop breathing. There's no reason for her to come in here though, so… you should be alright."

Zexion opened his mouth to reply, but his attempt to speak simply triggered a coughing fit.

"Shh, it's ok, don't try to talk, it'll just make your throat hurt. But, um, you get it, right? Stay in here, be quiet, that sort of thing."

Zexion nodded, then closed his eyes and pulled the blankets up past his ears to shut out the light coming through the blinds.

"I'll be back after school," Axel said, and patted the lump under the blankets awkwardly on what he assumed to be its shoulder. Grabbing his backpack, he checked his watch on his way down the stairs, cursing under his breath as he realized he'd be late for school and dashing out the door with Riku.

After seeing how tired the boy was, Axel was fairly confident throughout the day that he would simply sleep the day away, so he was naturally completely shocked upon entering the house with Riku after school, where he immediately caught sight of Zexion on the living room couch, curled up in a blanket and slowly sipping what appeared to be hot soup.

He and Riku both froze in the entryway, eyes glued to the smaller boy, who simply shrugged at them.

"I coughed and she heard me," he said, tipping the bowl to his lips for another sip as Riku's mom entered from the kitchen.

"Oh, hi boys! Axel, I didn't know you had a friend over last night, so you can imagine my surprise to find this one in your room around lunchtime!"

"Ah… yea, he, uh, we were working on a thing for class, and then we figured since we were up so late working, you know… so he, um, and then, he didn't feel good so I let him sleep," Axel stammered, trying desperately to hide his nervousness.

Riku eventually retreated to another room to work on homework, and Axel allowed himself to be ushered into the kitchen to get some food, attempting to ignore the fact that Riku's mom kept glancing over at him from her spot at the table, where she appeared to be half-heartedly working on a crossword puzzle.

"He's so skinny!" she finally noted, tucking a piece of silver hair behind her ear. "And small! Axel, are you sure he's been eating properly?"

"Uhh… yea, he eats," Axel replied, pulling a box of leftover takeout Chinese food from the fridge. "I dunno."

"He's on his fourth bowl of soup," she remarked, gesturing to the large soup pot on the stove. "Poor thing, he's been coughing up a lung all day."

Axel nodded, and he took his Chinese food out into the living room, inviting Zexion to come back upstairs and hang out in his room, sans parent. As an extra perk to the deal, he offered to carry the heavy quilt, which he decided, as he attempted to haul it up the stairs, probably weighed more than Zexion himself. Plopping down on his bed, he dug his fork into a piece of broccoli, allowing the other boy time to wrap himself up in the blanket again and settle in at the other end of the bed.

"So, this turned out okay," he said, chewing his broccoli and looking up at Zexion, who nodded.

"Thanks," he said eventually. "Your mom was really nice about making soup and everything."

"Oh, she's not my mom," Axel said, waving his fork a bit. "It's complicated, she's Riku's mom. Either way, though, don't worry about it. You're looking less like a corpse now, which is good. I imagine if you'd slept on the sidewalk, you'd be slightly less comfortable."

"Wouldn't have slept on the sidewalk," Zexion muttered, pulling the blanket up as it fell off of one of his shoulders. "Rinoa lets me sleep back behind the bar sometimes."

Axel narrowed his eyes. "What, this happens a lot?"

Zexion shrugged, leaning against the wall beside the window and coughing a few times. "Sometimes. My mom just gets really upset sometimes," he said slowly, looking away.

Oblivious to the fact that it might be a sensitive subject, Axel took another bite of broccoli, talking through a mouthful of food. "Why? Hey, you never told me why you got kicked out, anyway."

Zexion was silent for a moment, watching the redhead chew his food. "She caught me smoking pot," he said finally, checking Axel's face for a reaction.

"And she kicked you out of the house? Couldn't she just take it away and be pissed?"

"My older brother's in jail, for dealing it," Zexion said, looking down. "So she's really, really strict about stuff like that now. She doesn't care if I drink, just drugs."

"You drink a lot?"

"No," Zexion replied, glaring at the redhead. "I'm not stupid, okay? It's not like I smoke pot all the time either, I hardly do it at all, it's just a release! Every once in a while, a release."

"Alright, alright, no need to freak out, I never said you were a junkie," Axel said, spearing another piece of broccoli.

Zexion coughed a few times, then sat silently, blinking slowly.

"So, your brother's in jail, and your mom is all strict about you, the only one left, and wants you to be perfect, that kinda deal?"

Shrugging, Zexion stared across the room at Riku's wall. "My family's far from perfect," he mumbled. "Not everyone's as lucky as you."

So ended the conversation, for the time being, as Axel finished his broccoli, and Zexion stretched out on the bed and went back to sleep.

It wasn't until dinner that Axel heard Zexion's voice again. The small boy was polite and obviously grateful for the food, and both Axel's and Riku's parents had taken a liking to him by the end of the meal. It was around that time, as Axel was trying to figure out a good way to eliminate any questions about Zexion staying another night, that the doorbell rang. He'd been getting up to take his plate into the kitchen anyway, but by the time he got to the door, Riku's dad was already there, turning the lock and swinging it open to reveal a fierce, middle aged woman with blue-gray hair, surrounded by a number of children, (Axel counted five), one of whom appeared to be crying.

"Ms. Hunt?" Riku's dad had asked, his voice uncertain.

Before the woman could respond, the little girl who'd been crying had stomped into the house, tugging at Axel's jeans and demanding to see "Z", despite her mother's protests of "Maggie!"

The moment of confusion was short-lived, however – Zexion appeared beside Axel, scooping the little girl off of the ground and giving his mother a mortified look, refusing to meet Axel's eyes as he held the crying child. At Zexion's appearance, the other kids had started to talk, all trying to talk to Zexion at once despite the glare he'd fixed on the lot of them.

"I, uh, I didn't know you had kids," Riku's dad said, a little overwhelmed.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Evans, he never should have intruded like this," Zexion's mom replied, her voice ragged as she attempted to calm the 3-year-old in her arms and scold Zexion at the same time. "How could you-"

"Axel invited me," he protested, trying to detach Maggie from his neck, where she'd thrown her arms around him and refused to let go.

"Wait, do you know each other?" was Axel's only contribution, looking back and forth between Riku's dad and Zexion's mom, who had seemed utterly surprised to see each other when the door had opened.

"I, ah, Ms. Hunt is the receptionist at the building my office is in," Riku's dad said, trying to maintain a smile as he watched a girl who looked about 11 kicking Zexion hard in the shins.

"Paine, would you-"

"We didn't know where you were!"

"We missed you, Z…"

Completely overwhelmed, Zexion lapsed into another fit of hacking coughs, the girl finally letting go of his neck as he doubled over, clinging instead to his leg as he finally finished, silence settling over the large group at the door.

"Say thank you!" Zexion's mother hissed, pushing him back towards the house, where he muttered a pained "thanks" through his hoarse throat, catching Axel's eyes in humiliation for a moment before grabbing his shoes from just inside the door and stepping outside. "Thanks, Mr. Evans. Please thank your wife for me, as well, and, um, everyone."

"I'll, uh, I'll see you at school," Axel had called half-heartedly, as the silver-haired family had moved off towards a small, rusting car parked at the curb, Zexion carrying the little girl, the others all trying to talk to him again.

He figured it wouldn't be a good time to mention that Zexion was still wearing his pajama pants, or that they were his favorite ones, by far the most comfortable. Instead, he simply turned to Riku's dad, who shared a look with him before closing the door with a firm "Well, alright then."

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Two days later, Axel had looked up at the sound of his name during advisory, given no time to speak before Zexion, who had somehow located the classroom, had thrust a brown paper bag into his hands.

"These are yours," he'd said briskly, standing by as Axel peeked into the bag. "I washed them," he added, as Axel raised his eyebrows in appreciation of the clean, folded pajamas.

"Thanks," Axel had said; and Zexion had only stood for a moment longer to nod before turning to leave.

"See you later," Axel had called after him, actually surprised when the small boy turned around on his way out the door to give him a brief wave.

A few weeks after that, Zexion had appeared at their house around 10:00 at night.

"Hi," he said, when Axel answered the door.

"Hey."

They stood around in the doorway for a moment before Axel finally realized why Zexion was there and invited him in, offering to get out the old sleeping bag from the hallway closet.

"Oh," Zexion had said, blinking a few times and giving Axel a hard look.

The redhead had, once again, found himself feeling bewildered and confused, until he realized the look meant that Zexion wanted his bed.

"Or, you know, the bed," he'd said uncertainly, and when Zexion had given him a thin smile, he knew he'd said the right thing. He let him wear the same pajama pants as the last time, and disappeared to brush his teeth while the other boy got settled. Riku had given Axel a look like he wanted to say something, but had resigned himself to simply doing his homework as the other two bustled around.

When Axel returned from the bathroom, he found Zexion stretched out on his stomach half-asleep, the sheets pulled up to his waist and his bare upper body snuggled against Axel's many pillows. Seeing no room for himself, the redhead attempted to pull the extra blankets from the bed without disturbing the other boy, so as to make a nest on the floor.

Cringing, he stopped pulling on the blankets as Zexion murmured something in his sleep and opened one eye, narrowing it at Axel and turning onto his side a little to stare at him.

"What are you doing?" he mumbled, his voice barely audible over the sound of the water in the pipes as Riku showered.

"I was just gonna let you have the bed, you know, I'll, um, sleep on the floor, or whatever."

Zexion repeated his trademark slow blink, then sat up, scooting to one side and gesturing for Axel to climb over him and take the side by the window.

After a moment of hesitation, Axel obliged, and, as the smaller boy seemed to settle in, Axel wrapped one arm around him, leaving a soft, chaste kiss on his shoulder before scooting a few inches away and closing his eyes.

When he awoke in the morning, he found Zexion curled up against him, one hand resting on Axel's hip where his shirt had been pushed up a few inches in the night, his head resting on Axel's shoulder.

The three of them walked to school together that morning, and from then on, Axel and Zexion would say hello in the hallways, exchange friendly words and maybe a smile or two. Zexion would appear at the front door every once in a while, and Axel would always let him in, the two of them settling into his warm, soft bed, falling asleep separately and waking up intertwined.

They were never a couple. When he really thought about it, Axel couldn't pinpoint what their connection was or why they both felt it, but he had the feeling that not many people saw Zexion in a vulnerable or embarrassing position, as he had, and that the small boy's grudging trust and affection were reserved for very few others outside of his family, whom Axel had come to realize the other boy valued infinitely more than he would express in words.

"So, you're not exactly the last kid left," he'd said one day, watching the other's guarded expression. When all he received was a blink, he continued. "Your little sister's cute – Maggie, was it? They all call you Z, huh?"

At the mention of his little sister, Zexion had been unable to keep from smiling, although he attempted to hide it as soon as he realized what he was doing. "Yea," he'd said. "They all call me Z."

"Five of them, right?"

Zexion nodded. "Sophie's 3, Maggie's… 5. Matt just turned 7. And Paine and JD are twins, they're 11."

"And then you, 17. And you said you have an older brother?"

"Yea, he's 19."

Axel nodded. "So do they always travel in packs?"

"They were worried about me," Zexion said quietly, shrugging. "If you're talking about that first time I was over here."

"Close-knit family," Axel observed. "Yea, that's what I was referring to."

"Mom has to work a lot of hours. She has two jobs."

"Ahh, I see. So, she's gone, your older brother is gone, your dad…?"

"Gone."

"So you're kind of like their dad, then," Axel concluded, laughing a little when Zexion fixed him with a blank stare.

"No, I'm kind of like their older brother."

"Well, but, you know what I mean. You take care of them."

Zexion sighed. "Yea, I take care of them."

That had been the end of the conversation, save for a few minutes later, when Zexion had unexpectedly added "They're good kids" as an afterthought, nodding a little at Axel when the redhead had looked up.

That admission was the last Axel would get out of him on the topic of his family, and while it seemed sparse, he'd recognized a fierce sort of affection in the boy's eyes as he'd said it; one that he'd see again later one night at the club, the little DJ dragging Axel from the arms of a taller, dreadlocked man who'd taken a liking to him.

"Rinoa's told me about him," he'd muttered sharply, ignoring Axel's angry protests at being pulled away from a man he'd perceived as a damn good kisser, and nothing more.

"What, you think I can't take care of myself? You think I've never had to tell a guy no, and push him off me and get the fuck out? Jesus, Zex, you think I can't-"

"He would _break_ you," Zexion had spat, whipping around to face the redhead, that same look in his eyes. "Don't be so naïve."

And with that, he'd shoved the redhead onto a barstool, given Rinoa a pointed look, and disappeared into the crowd.

"Who was it?" Rinoa had asked, pushing a bottle of water across the bar.

"Tall, big, dreadlocks. Facial hair."

Rinoa had sighed, pointing across to where the man was visible, already with another smaller guy. When Axel had confirmed that that was, in fact, the guy, she'd given him a light smack.

"Oh, honey, _please_ don't tell me I have to be worried about you going with guys like Xaldin. I thought you had a little more sense than that!"

"What? What's wrong with him?"

She'd raised her eyebrows, passing him a bowl of nuts from the back. "Baby, let me just say… you hear a lot from this side of the bar. And I've heard _way_ too much about him to let a boy like you anywhere near him. You should thank Zex for lookin' out for you. You don't wake up happy after a night with Xaldin."

Axel made a disgusted noise, popping a handful of nuts into his mouth. "Jeez, I wasn't gonna sleep with him, I was just having a little fun!"

When Rinoa shook her head, he continued indignantly. "I'm not like that, ok? I would never-"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, babe," she'd said, leaning across the bar to speak more closely with him. "With him, it doesn't matter. The word 'no' isn't in Xaldin's vocabulary. You can say it, sure, but it makes no difference. Once he settles on you, there's no stopping him. He doesn't care."

Axel's eyes widening, he turned back to look at Xaldin, who had pushed the new guy against the wall. "You mean-I mean, he… he doesn't…he just…?"

"He got out of prison a while back," she said, nodding. "I have a bet going with some friends about how long until someone presses charges again and he goes back to jail."

Axel had nodded slowly, massaging his arm where Zexion's tight grip had caught him. He'd made sure to thank the other boy the next time he'd run into him in the halls at school, although Zexion had simply chewed him out for being "reckless and naïve."

It was in this fashion that they remained friends, growing close enough for Axel to comfortably tease Zexion about how short and skinny he was without worrying that he'd lose a friend, and comfortable enough for Zexion to flash an occasional smile, or let out a small laugh at something the redhead would say, or even make a subtle joke of his own, discreetly looking up afterwards to see if Axel had caught it.

And it was for this reason that, as Axel had looked Demyx up and down, he'd decided he could convince Zexion to work with him. It would be a tough case, he'd thought to himself – the blond was shy and awkward and didn't know anything about the technical aspects of sound. He was eager to please and actually kind of cute when you took a good look at him, but Axel wasn't sure how the blond would handle Zexion's sharp, commanding tone or his hard, angry stare, not to mention his trademark slow, "You're Stupid" blink. He had the image in his mind of Demyx crumpling beneath Zexion's glare, and he could easily picture the furious look he'd receive when he'd announce to Zexion that Demyx, the new kid with the fluffy blond hair and the nervous laugh, would be his assistant.

At least the kid played music. Axel had had to remind himself a few times that he had met Zexion because Zexion was a _DJ_. He'd realized over time that the occupation was certainly no mistake; Zexion derived much greater pleasure from music and sound than Axel was sure he could even understand. The boy _lived_ for music, and he'd somehow saved enough for a laptop specifically so he could work on sound, manipulating it and shaping it to his liking with complicated programs that Axel sat in awe of. From time to time though, he would catch Zexion listening to something simple and acoustic, changing nothing, manipulating nothing, watching no sound waves, adjusting no levels or speeds, simply listening, eyes open or closed, but always relaxed.

Axel's hope, as he had finished his story and sat at the top of the theater steps, watching the blond tucking a piece of his hair behind his ear, was that he could appeal to that side of Zexion, the side that listened to acoustic music and thought his siblings were "good kids" and looked out for his friends.

_Maybe_, he thought, glancing over to where Zexion was visible working through the booth window. _Maybe I can get him to give the kid a fair chance. _

Demyx sneezed unexpectedly, sniffing a little as he looked up, his hair falling in his face as he attempted to give Axel a smile, resulting in a sort of goofy, hopeful grin. The redhead found it endearing, and couldn't help but smile back, shaking his head. But at the same time, he cringed internally for the boy – it would be a real experience for him working with Zexion.

_Well…_

He stood up, reaching down to give Demyx a hand getting up off the ground.

_It never hurts to try, right? _

* * *

**AN: **Soo, yea, enter Zexion for real. I kinda really like him, even if his weapon is (sigh) a book and he's kind of really manly in Re:CoM, from what cutscenes I've seen on youtube. ( speaking of KH2FM, Re:CoM, that whole deal, did you guys see the cutscene with Axel and Roxas on the tower?! Oh man, so sad... )  
Annnnnnnnnyways, hahahha. **Thank you so much for reading, and please don't hesitate to leave a review and let me know what you thought! **XD 


	5. Vision

A/N: Yeah, it's been a little while. Writing had to take backseat to life for a bit, but I think I'm back, in case any of y'all are still reading. I'm on the upswing, so cut this chapter a little slack. I got bigger plans for this baby. :)

* * *

The next few days had seen unimaginable amounts of auditions. Axel and Namine had taken to sitting in the wings and watching from there, exchanging looks with raised eyebrows at some of the worst singing they had ever heard and debating who would be best for the different parts, who was a good actor but couldn't sing, who was a great singer but couldn't act, etc, etc.

Occasionally Demyx would stop by, seeking out Axel as an oasis of kindness after trying in vain to be helpful to Zexion up in the booth. The redhead had had a talk with Zexion about trying to be friendlier, eventually receiving a terse "Fine!" before the smaller boy shuffled back to his computer. The effect of the conversation had been Zexion actually telling Demyx what he was supposed to do instead of just assuming he would know, but he refused to make other conversation or show any signs of hospitality, like a smile or a "hello" when Demyx appeared in the booth after school every day.

Namine was indifferent about the blond, although she would occasionally give Axel a dark look after hearing a story from Demyx about how he didn't know what mic cable looked like, or how he spent 15 minutes trying to figure out where he was supposed to put a CD into one of the pre-amps before Zexion ripped it from his fingers, pointing to the CD player directly behind him with a withering glare.

"He said my name today," Demyx had reported victoriously on Friday, beaming at Axel and Namine from his spot atop a prop table. "Usually he just shoves a CD case at me and tells me something to do, or a microphone or something, but today he said 'Demyx', and _then_ shoved the speaker at me! Although I guess it was more that he _yelled_ 'Demyx' because, um, because I was in the closet trying to put back all the cables I got tangled up in yesterday… So I, you know, I came and got the speaker. But then I had to pick up the cables anyway, because, um, because the speaker had to go in there."

"That's, uh, that's great, Dem. The name is the first step," Axel had said, giving the blond a thumbs up and elbowing Namine, who looked away from the audition she'd been watching to face them.

"Actually," she said, picking a hair off of her shirt, "Zexion's been civil to me since the day he started."

Demyx laughed a little, fidgeting with the edges of his sleeves. "Maybe because, um, because you're a girl, he's nicer?"

"Well, I was thinking it was probably because I know you can't put a CD into a pre-amp, or maybe because I know how to coil up a cable the right way, or _maybe_ because I have some self-confidence and stand up straight and, oh, right, I don't fawn over him. But you know, you're probably right. It's probably because I'm a girl," she said, fixing him with a wide grin before rolling her eyes at Axel and going back to watching auditions.

"Namine's big on the whole 'tough love' thing," Axel had explained, patting a crestfallen Demyx on the back.

Despite the boy's klutzy, shy disposition, Axel found him to actually be good company, and he'd taken Demyx around to get him better acquainted with the city over the weekend, showing him the best places to get tea and the worst places to be stuck waiting for a bus, as well as the areas that would be infested with tourists in the summer and the lesser-known areas with great, cheap food and good places to see local bands. He'd headed over to the blond's house that Sunday, where they'd made pasta for dinner and Demyx had played a few of his songs for Axel to hear, blushing profusely when he'd finished and looking embarrassed when Axel voiced his approval.

"Holy shit!" had been his first words on the subject, and he hadn't stopped raving about how good Demyx was until he finally left around 10:30.

Either way, Mr. Leonhart's plan for the show to be cast by Friday had been postponed by the sheer amount of auditions, which explained why on Monday, as Axel attempted to enter the theater after school, he found a huge crowd of students blocking the way, all attempting to view one cast list that had been posted on the bulletin board directly beside the door.

Pushing past the masses, he headed into the theater, where he knew Riku would have a copy of the list on hand. His thoughts were confirmed as he caught sight of a group of tech kids, all crowded around his brother, who appeared to be obliviously reading his script.

He received a brief "Hey" from Riku as he dropped his backpack by the stage, pushing through the others to take a seat next to him.

"They won't leave me alone," Riku murmured, flipping a page in his script and biting at the eraser on his pencil. "I told them to look at the one in the hall, but they say it's too crowded. As if they haven't made a crowd here."

"Who's the lead?" Axel asked, spotting the edge of the list poking out from the pages of the script. "Can I see it?"

Riku looked up, met with a chorus of "Yeah, let him see it" and "C'mon, Riku!" from the surrounding underclassmen. A silence settled over them all as he sighed, fingering the edge of the paper before sliding it out from between the pages and handing it to Axel, who held it up high out of reach of the others as he got up to perch himself on the edge of the stage.

"Alright, alright, you guys wanna know?" he asked loudly, looking around at the faces of a surprising number of kids he found he didn't know. "Let's see… Theodore #1, the lead, will be…"

He blinked a few times as he finally looked down at the list in his hands, raising his eyebrows and tracing the line from the character's name straight across to make sure he was reading it correctly. "…Roxas Casey?"

An immediate buzz ran through the group as everyone remarked needlessly to each other that someone other than Sora Jacobs was the lead, and that they didn't recognize the name, and who was _Roxas Casey_?

There was a shout of "Where's Sora Jacobs, then?" to which Axel, still vaguely shocked, searched the sheet, finding Sora listed as Tommy, the writer who Roxas's character would eventually befriend in an attempt to have the main female lead, unsurprisingly played by Kairi, written off of the show within the show. He numbly handed the sheet off to an excitable yet organized looking girl he at least recognized, looking up as Namine appeared behind him, having come in the backstage door.

"You look dead, hun, what's up? Bad cast?" she asked, plopping down beside him and giving him a gentle shove. When he simply stared at her, she flicked him in the forehead, narrowing her eyes at him until he open his mouth to croak a reply.

"Roxas," he said finally, shrugging in disbelief. "Roxas is the lead."

"Yea? Wow, that's a real accomplishment around here, anyone other than Sora."

"That means he's gonna be here, like, all the time. I thought _maybe_ he'd get a small part, if anything."

"And?" Namine said, extracting a bobby pin from her hair and re-pinning her bangs out of her face. "So he'll be here all the time. I thought you _wanted_ this."

"I do!" he protested, "I mean, I did. I mean… I do. It's just weird to think about him being around all the time again. It was weird enough to see him last week, and now it'll be… all the time."

"I thought it went well, though," she remarked, pulling a pen from her pocket. "You said it was all… normal, you know. Being around him. Soccer in the park, or whatever."

"It _was_," Axel replied, allowing the girl to pull his hand into her lap, uncapping her pen with her teeth so she could draw. "It was really normal. Strangely normal. _Abnormally_ normal. Maybe it's just because I can't even begin to imagine Roxas Casey singing and dancing and wearing stage makeup."

He eyed his hand, the familiar tickle of Namine's pen intriguing him. She appeared to be drawing a flower on his thumb.

"I dunno," he said eventually, tearing his eyes away from the flower to stare across to where Zexion sat, near Riku, examining something Demyx had handed him. "I mean… it's like… ok, it's like this. When I'm around him now, when I'm physically in the same room as him or something, I'm totally cool with it, and I want to be… I want to be in his life again, you know? I want him to be in _my_ life again. But then as soon as he's gone, I get totally… apprehensive. About the whole thing. It's like… I wish I could just forget about him completely and start over."

Namine paused, having finished her flower, and looked up at him thoughtfully. "Forget about Roxas?"

"It would make it a hell of a lot easier to be friends with him."

"But… _forget_? Really, you'd want that?"

"It'd just be like it is with any other actor, we'd meet here in the theater and become friends, and I'd have no reason to get all weird about it."

"Well," Namine said, following Axel's gaze to Demyx and Zexion, who appeared to be actually having something resembling a conversation. Looking back to Axel's hand, she pulled it into her lap again to write.

"History is important," she said after a moment, patting his hand as she finished with it and capping her pen.

As Axel pulled his hand back to read, she hopped off the stage, heading over to Riku to say hi. Looking down, Axel followed the flower to the back of his hand, where Namine had written one cryptic sentence:

_Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never met._

--

Riku stared half-heartedly at the man standing before the Tech Theater class, studying his messy blond hair and his beat-up tennis shoes and everything in between. A few minutes after surrendering the cast list, the commotion had died down; Tifa's appearance at the front of the theater with the musical's alleged choreographer quieting the masses.

"So guys, please be nice to Mr. Strife," she was saying, gesturing to the disheveled blond who stood beside her, two days' worth of stubble on his chin and dark circles beneath his eyes laying emphasis on his apathetic expression . "Usually we would choreograph the dancing ourselves, or hire someone from a… a company, but Mr. Strife is a friend of mine, and he's doing us a great favor by working for much less than a regular choreographer would!"

Stepping aside at the murmured "thanks" that spread through the class, Tifa gestured for Mr. Strife to introduce himself to the kids, dismissing his unsure smile with a wave of her hand and a gentle push towards the audience, ignoring the look he gave her, which clearly shouted "I Am Incapable of Introducing Myself Effectively, And You Should Therefore Do This For Me".

"Ah, hey," he said, hands dug into the pockets of his jeans, which had been rolled up at the bottoms to avoid getting dirty despite the obvious rip in one knee. "So, like Tif-uh, like _Ms. Lockheart _said," he said deliberately, giving Tifa a grin, "I'm uh, I'm a friend of hers, and I was actually looking for some work, so you can imagine how uh, how great this opportunity is for me. For us. For all of us, to, ah, to work together on this… musical…"

"Well, it's not like you'll be working with _us_, really," Namine interjected, crossing her arms and ignoring the pointed look Axel gave her. "You'll be working with the actors more."

Giving a nervous sort of laugh, Mr. Strife stepped back to lean against the edge of the stage. "Well, I suppose… Since you all won't be doing much dancing, heh…"

Namine glanced sideways at Axel, giving him a Can You Believe This Tool? look as she sank lower in her seat.

After a short silence, during which Riku joined in the Communication of Mutual Disapproval Through Eyebrow Signals party with Axel and Namine, Axel raised his hand, smiling amicably when Mr. Strife called on him.

"So, what musicals have you choreographed before?" he asked, attempting to sound genuinely interested and hoping that maybe, despite his conspicuous looks, the man would spout off some strangely impressive list of Broadway musicals in self-defense.

"Ah, well, that's the exciting part, I haven't really, well, I haven't exactly choreographed _any_ musicals lately…"

"Lately?"

"Ever," he clarified, blinking as he leaned against the stage. "I haven't choreographed anything, um, ever."

"So… you're a choreographer, but you've… _never_ actually done any work in the field?" Namine asked slowly, narrowing her eyes.

"What a- what a _great _question, um, thanks so much for bringing that up," Mr. Strife said, his mood seeming to pick up a little. "I'm not actually, by trade, a choreographer, but, ah, a _writer_. I'm currently writing my first novel, which I'm, um, well, I've actually encountered a little, ah, writer's block. If you're not all familiar with writer's block, that's where you, um, you can't write _anything_ for a while. And then when you do, you think you've finally gotten through it, and it's like, it's like this-this _glorious awakening_, and you re-read what you've just written only to find, to your tragic dismay, that it's actually a steaming pile of shit."

Axel couldn't help but let out a stifled laugh at this point, mostly at Tifa's face, which had turned a little pink, although Mr. Strife didn't seem to hear him – the blond's eyes had widened, and he'd rolled up the sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt so as to gesture better, an excited grin spreading across his face as he took a breath to continue talking.

"But you guys," he continued slowly, his voice lowering to almost a whisper. "Whether or not I'm actually a-a _real_ choreographer is beside the point, because-because choreography, _dance_, isn't about whether or not you went to fancy dancing school - it's about _vision!_ And-and as a writer, I'd like to think I count as a _vision_ary who can en_vision_ a-a _great_ musical! And I-I think that each and every one of you can be a _magnificent_ dancer if you-if you just have that _vision_, right?"

Riku groaned, giving Axel a dark look as Namine sat up straighter in her chair, looking outright disgusted at the grinning man.

"So, um, since writing is an art, couldn't you just _envision_ yourself writing a good book and, uh, write one?" Namine asked, fixing her critical stare on Mr. Strife, who simply blinked. "I just- I just want to make sure I'm getting your point here," she continued, "Since it's an _art_, you don't actually have to be good, if you just… have a vision?"

"No, no, no, no, _no_!" he replied emphatically, gesturing with one arm as he dragged the other through his hair.

"The _vision_," he said slowly, holding up one finger as if pointing to some unseen, intangible insight that might be clinging to the ceiling, "is what _makes_ it good."

And with that, he reached a hand into his back pocket, extracting a small bag of green gummy bears from which he began to eat, chewing each one with a satisfied smile.

--

If it hadn't been for Axel's contemplative silence throughout the rest of tech class and the two hours they spent working after school in the costume room, Namine might not have checked the clock so often, and she might not have headed out into the halls to find Kairi 15 minutes earlier than usual to go to their 6:00 class at the gym, enthusiastically advertised as "Abs N' Back Workout with Amber and Marisa!!" Amber and Marisa being, of course, the perky instructors with abs of steel and unnaturally thinly tweezed eyebrows, leaving them both with the look of the permanently surprised.

Namine considered Amber and Marisa as she walked, sneakers squeaking on the shiny plastic floor. Amber was The Girly One, who wore a bright pink sports bra and came to class fully made-up every time, her blonde highlighted hair in a high ponytail and her voice always distinctly feminine. Kairi would always smile and act excited when Amber commended her "perfect form, girl!" But as soon as Amber's blindingly whitened smile had led her to another girl in the class, Kairi would turn and raise her eyebrows at Namine, laughing weakly through her labored breathing as she did another sit-up. On the other end of the spectrum, Marisa was The Athletic One, who barked orders and countdowns from the front of the room, her men's athletic shorts still managing to show off her impressive physique. While Kairi and Namine both joked about Amber's airheaded qualities, they remained vaguely terrified of Marisa, who would occasionally make the rounds, pausing above Namine's contorted face during the workout to bellow: "Breathe! Breathe! _Breathe!_ And, 10! And, 9! And, 8…"

Namine liked to believe that if she and Kairi had to be identified with one of the instructors of "Abs N' Back Workout with Amber and Marisa!!", she would be Marisa, and Kairi would be Amber.

_Nothing against Kai, of course,_ she thought, pushing against the door to another backstage hallway. _But when it comes to ferocity…_

Her thought-sentence didn't even need to be finished – the sound of Kairi's tinkling laughter from around the corner finished it for her.

"Aww, thanks!" she was saying, and as Namine approached the corner, she heard a deeper voice, also familiar, replying.

"Well, I mean, there was a lot of competition, so you must have really distinguished yourself to Mr. Leonhart. I mean, I didn't see your audition – I know, I know, I'm sorry! – but I've heard your singing, you're, I mean, you're really… talented."

Namine's steps slowed to a stop as her brain identified the boy's voice.

"Oh, _Mar_-ly, you're so sweet!"

A slight shuffling of feet, and then a moment of silence, and Namine narrowed her eyes as she strode purposefully around the corner.

"There you _are,_" she said loudly, fixing an easy smile on Kairi as the two redheads drew apart from a hug. "Did you still wanna go tonight?"

"Oh! Yea, of course," Kairi replied, slightly unnerved by the suddenness with which Namine had appeared and the conviction with which the blonde now stared at her.

Marluxia looked distinctly uncomfortable with the understated tension before him, and he offered a tight "Hey, Namine," before digging his hands into his pockets and taking a hesitant step backwards.

"Do I get a hug?" she asked matter-of-factly, her smile widening as Kairi stepped toward her.

"Of course!"

Namine's smile only grew as the two girls hugged, and when they stepped apart, the awkwardness set in full force, the three standing in what seemed to Marluxia to be a silent triangle of girl-provoked doom.

He was not particularly listening as they exchanged a few sentences about their class at the gym, and he was on the verge of making his escape when Axel rounded the corner, his distracted eyes managing to locate the girls and draw him to them.

Jingling his keys a little, he raised his eyebrows as he entered the scene, thinking the three still figures reminded him vaguely of Stonehenge, minus the big rocks and plus a large dose of pink.

"You guys ready?"

Kairi tilted her head a little, glancing between Marly and Namine. "Oh, I'm ready," she replied. Staring Namine down, she continued. "Are you?"

"More than you'll ever know," Namine said softly, enjoying the heavy silence that set in directly afterwards.

Axel nodded slowly, watching Marluxia's vaguely terrified expression and the Eye-Narrowing contest that the two girls appeared to be having.

"Uh, ok. So… can we go?"

"Mmhmm!" Kairi replied, her voice almost sickeningly positive. Namine added a coldly chipper "yep," and the two girls paused for a few seconds longer before each snapping into hurried motion, waving goodbye to Marluxia and striding quickly away down the hall with Axel close behind.

* * *

A/N: So if anyone did just read this chapter... thanks for stickin around. :) It means a lot to me. I know it's been a year. I'll do better.


	6. I Can't Believe How Alive I Feel

Axel sighed, staring with mild frustration at the tangle of ropes, cables, and various fake plants before him. Tifa had informed the crew that today would be a day of major deep cleaning in the wings due to a visit from the fire marshal that was expected to occur sometime in the next couple of days, and while Axel could usually stand cleaning, he was truly in a state of disbelief at what some of the freshmen considered putting things away. On top of the stress of cleaning an entire messy backstage with very little actually useful help, Axel had been avoiding the booth like the plague. Zexion and Demyx had yet to figure out how to work well together, and it put Axel on edge to be around an angry Zexion.

"Wait, you want me to sing right here?"

Roxas's voice snapped Axel out of his thoughts, and he raised his head to watch the blond onstage arguing with Mr. Leonhart.

"Well, this is where we rehearse, so… yes, I would say that."

Roxas looked nervously at the surrounding techies and actors. No one seemed to be paying much attention to him, but they were all still very much there, and he had expected a somehow different situation. Maybe rehearsing in the music room, with just the other actors, or just practicing the singing parts at home. Alone.

"I… uh… okay," he mumbled, leaning against a set of stairs momentarily pushed onstage. "Just, um… from the top? Or…"

Leon took a step back to pull up a chair. "I'll count you in, alright?"

Roxas nodded as Mr. Leonhart took a seat.

_1, 2, 3, 4._

The lights seemed awfully bright, and he swallowed hard as Namine pushed past him with an armful of saws.

"Hello? I dunno what you usually count to, but I was gonna stop at four…"

Roxas could feel his face turning red. "Sorry, just, um, just give me a beat I guess, I'll just do it."

Leon sighed and began to beat a slow rhythm on his knee. On the fourth beat, he gave Roxas a meaningful look, and the blond choked a little, but began to weakly sing a song from the second act they'd been working on.

"There you are, standing strong…"

"I'm gonna need a little more volume, Casey."

"Oh, I love how you see… right to the heart of me-"

"Roxas."

Roxas gulped. "Yes?"

"I'm sitting three feet away from you and I can hardly hear you. What happened to the voice I heard at auditions? Or backstage earlier?"

"It's just- I, I just, I dunno," Roxas stammered, looking around. "I'm just distracted, and… everyone's… here."

"Everyone's gonna be here at every rehearsal. Everyone's gonna be here at the show."

Roxas sighed and looked down, then up again as Namine brushed past his shoulder once again. She shot him a smile as she walked by, and he followed her movement to the left wing, where his eyes found Axel wrestling a large piece of plywood up against the wall.

Namine retreated behind the pile of wood, gesturing for Axel to come around back and talk to her when he was done. He nodded, finally getting the plywood to stay still, and ambled over after a moment.

"What's up?"

Namine raised her eyebrows. "He's a cutie, you know."

"Roxas?"

"No, Leonhart. Um, yeah, Roxas," she replied, jabbing Axel purposefully in the shoulder. "I see why you went for him. Or whatever."

Axel narrowed his eyes. "I'm sorry, are you telling me you _like_ him?"

"Gross, no! Ew!"

Namine looked considerably offended, then looked smugly to one side. "I have _another_ man to deal with right now, anyway."

Axel rolled his eyes. "Right, right, Marly. How's that goin' for ya? Destroyed your friendship with Kairi yet?"

Namine responded merely with a glare, to which he shrugged and grinned, leaning back around the lumber to glance at Roxas again. He could faintly hear the blond's voice carrying over from the stage, but Roxas was singing directly into the floor and the surrounding cleanup was loud enough to just about drown him out.

"Leonhart looks _pissed_," Namine remarked, appearing at Axel's shoulder.

"Mm."

"He may be cute, but the kid won't sing."

"He'll sing. I'm sure he will."

"Uh huh."

Namine watched with him for another moment before giving Axel a hearty smack on the shoulder and heading off to collect more tools from the other wing.

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Demyx eyed the screen in front of him with dismay. Zexion had handed him a huge pile of unlabeled cd's along with his laptop, and instructed him to find a thunderstorm sound effect and label all the cd's with what was on them. Unfortunately, Demyx seemed to have pressed the wrong key, and the laptop had begun to beep and eventually shut itself off. When he'd finally managed to get it to turn back on, it demanded a password, and he'd just about exhausted all of his ideas for what Zexion would use as a password.

The natural response to this situation would be to ask the other boy for his password. Obviously, right? But Demyx had already been accused of asking too many questions and being useless, and it had only been 15 minutes since the latter accusation, so he found himself torn between pissing off Zexion and asking a question, or… pissing off Zexion by not getting his work done.

Raising his eyes from the screen, he spotted Zexion in the balcony hooking up a speaker, and instead of thinking of a solution to the problem, he found himself content to watch Zexion's slim fingers untangling cables, the tendons in his forearms flexing as he lifted the heavy speaker onto a stand, his shoulder blades moving beneath his t-shirt and his feathery hair swinging against a hard-set jaw.

"Did you know," he mumbled, resting his chin in his hands, "did you know that you're gorgeous?"

Zexion shook his arms out, having settled the speaker on its stand, and pushed a hand through his hair before reaching up to adjust its angle.

"No," Demyx whispered, tapping idly at the keyboard. "No, I don't think you know."

Zexion was climbing onto the seats to get the cables all plugged in, and Demyx sighed, finally wrenching his eyes away to lean back in his chair after catching sight of his own reflection in the glass window of the booth.

"I'm only a little pathetic," he muttered, leaning forward again and placing his fingers on the keys. "Password, password… Demyx… is… pathetic… nope? No? There's a surprise… Uh… password… I am… really sexy and amazi- what? Too long? Huh…"

Sighing again, he let his head fall toward his chest and closed his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and trying to figure out how to best tell Zexion he'd managed to screw up what sounded like an easy assignment.

"Heyy, Zexion, buddy, I just, uh, just fucked up your laptop, but no worries, all I need is your password… I, shit… Hey Zexion, just out of curiosity, what would your computer password be, you know, if you had a password? Not that I need it, just, uh, just wondering… Hey Zexion, did you know I have this huge effing crush on you? Oh by the way, what's your password? Hey – hey _Zexion_, I know I'm completely _fucking_ incompetent, but is there any way you could tell me your –"

"Easymac12."

Demyx's head snapped up as he heard Axel's voice behind him.

"I-how long have you-"

"Easymac, like the Kraft product that allows you to make mac and cheese in like, 45 seconds, and the number 12."

Demyx could feel the redness in his cheeks, and Axel's intent gaze didn't help. "Really?"

Axel grinned. "Really. Fuckin' weird, right? But that's his password. Don't even ask me how I know it."

Shaking his head, Demyx entered the password, and the computer immediately sprung to life, loading all of Zexion's files onto the desktop.

"You're welcome," Axel said, turning his eyes to Zexion instead, who was making his way through the balcony to the booth. "And for the record… you're not incompetent."

Demyx looked up, returning the grin, and grabbed the top cd from the pile to put into the computer. "Thanks."

Axel was already halfway out the door, but he paused to turn back for a moment before Zexion entered the booth. "Well… not _completely_, anyway."

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"Roxas, just stop."

Roxas tore his eyes away from the ground to look at Mr. Leonhart.

"Look, if you can't sing on a stage, with other people around, then this isn't gonna work out."

Roxas felt his stomach tighten as he met the director's eyes. "What are you saying? I mean, I'll get over it, I'll-"

"I'm saying I know you can sing, but I need to see it here, now, or we can pull Sora for the lead and find someone else for his part."

"I can do it."

"Roxas, actions speak louder than words."

Roxas glanced around again at the techies working backstage, at Kairi and Sora reading lines out in the house, at Tifa and Riku discussing the lighting design on the other side of the stage.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I…"

"Hmmm…"

Leon grumbled and looked away from Roxas, watching the awkward choreographer making notes about God knows what in the house.

Roxas closed his eyes.

_What am I afraid of?_

He squeezed his eyes closed tighter, as tight as he could, shutting out Kairi and Sora's voices, shutting out the bright lights, shutting out Axel throwing lumber around and Namine's wrench tightening lights on the catwalk. He felt his lungs fill with air, then softly, he picked up where he'd left off.

"I have never been-"

"I can't hear you."

"- in a love like this-"

"More."

Roxas opened his eyes.

"Oh, you move my soul-"

"Better."

"Every time we kiss."

Roxas paused to take a breath. Leon sat low in his chair, leaning back and staring expectantly at the blond.

"I'm waiting," he said slowly, challenging the boy with his eyes.

Roxas met his gaze, then straightened up off the stairs and took a few steps forward, past Leon's chair to the front of the stage. Standing directly under the lights, he closed his eyes once again and gently eased his voice into song.

"Oh, I love how you heal…"

Leon turned around in his seat, and the wings and house fell into silence as Roxas' voice rang out through the theater:

"_I can't believe how alive I feel."_

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Demyx smiled in the booth as he heard Roxas sing what had, for quite some time now, been one of his favorite songs. Zexion was in the closet sorting through old tapes, and Demyx had finally succeeded in finding the thunderstorm he needed. He sang along quietly to himself as he labeled another CD.

"You're a waterfall, washing over me…"

Zexion's rustling from the closet stopped.

"I'm a thirsty man, let me drink you in…"

The sound of box on floor, and Zexion stepped out into the booth, silently listening to his new apprentice sing.

"I am on my way, you're a mountain top. When I reach for you, your love lifts me up…"

Demyx trailed off into humming as Roxas killed the rest of the chorus onstage, switching out the CD in the computer's drive for yet another one and labeling its contents with a Sharpie.

Zexion watched with mild interest, unsure of why the awkward blond's voice evoked any kind of feeling in him, much less one of comfort. He vaguely recalled Axel mentioning that Demyx was a musician, but at the time he'd been so furious at the redhead for volunteering him a new assistant he hadn't really been listening. Demyx launched into the chorus again with more animation this time, and Zexion simply leaned against the doorframe to listen.

"All that I want is to be… oy, Z!"

Demyx whirled around in his chair, having finished his last cd. "I'm all- oh! You're… right there. Wow, I didn't even know you were, um, you were standing there… I, um, I finished with the… with the cd's…"

Zexion's calm expression had vanished, and he slowly stepped away from the wall.

"What did you call me?"

Demyx blushed for the millionth time that day, it seemed, collecting the cd's into their original pile. "I just, I dunno, I didn't mean to-"

"Whatever."

Zexion snatched the cd's from Demyx's hand and stuffed them back into his backpack. "Don't ever call me Z again. Ever. Not you."

"I was just-"

"No. Not you. Just don't _fucking_ call me that," he snarled, zipping up his backpack. "Fuck! I'm going to miss my fucking bus."

Demyx attempted to apologize as Zexion stormed out of the booth, but the smaller boy didn't seem to notice or care.

"Shit!"

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_Shit._

Zexion pulled his hood over his head and tried to drown out the noise of the bus with his headphones. He switched to louder and heavier music, but nothing seemed to satisfy him until, purely by accident, he switched it to an old acoustic song, something he'd been handed at the club one night, someone's demo. He would never remember the name of the artist, but he knew every word to the song.

The bus turned a tight corner and gravity pulled Zexion against the window.

_Shit, Z! What the fuck was that? _

Ding. Next stop, 4th and Walker. Stop requested. Ding.

_He gets to me. Why? He aggravates me more than people usually do._

The bus slowed to a stop and Zexion watched the old lady in front of him slowly make her way down the stairs to the sidewalk. Two annoying girls replaced her, talking loudly and tactlessly about boys.

_Shut up._

"Stace, I don't even know what you see in him. He's an _idiot_. Seriously."

"I know, I know, I don't know how to explain it, okay? I mean, you don't think he's cute at all?"

"No. Seriously, like, he's not even remotely cute. He's just stupid."

"He's not-"

"Stace, he's a _loser_."

"Lizzy, he feels like _home_."

_He feels like home. _

Zexion shuddered. All he could think of was Demyx's voice, Demyx's face – he'd actually looked relaxed up until Zexion had blown up at him. Demyx's big, dopey eyes and his stupid fluffy hair and his ridiculous, terrible collarbones, the way his hair would fall down on his dumb face and the way you could kind of tell he had muscles under his stupid well-fitting clothes.

None of it mattered, though, did it? There were plenty of attractive people in the world who pissed Zexion off, so why did this one have him so inexplicably trapped?

_He's not even that hot. I mean, not really. I mean, he is. But that's not the point. Being around him is easy, comfortable. I could listen to him sing for hours. I could listen to him- ugh!_

Ding. Next stop, 17th and Walker. Stop requested. Ding.

_He actually got his shit done today._

Zexion closed his eyes. Today he would nap on the bus. Sleep on it, right?

* * *

A/N:  
Thanks for reading, of course. Credit lyrics to Rascal Flatts' song "Where You Are".  
I'm a bit drugged out now on meds for a health condition, so hopefully my proofread wasn't too God-awful. I'm determined to finish this story. As usual, you guys really are the best. :)


	7. Personal

_In Axel's dream, a gentle acoustic melody pushes him out the door. He walks and the world around him stands still, impatient, like the whole city is waiting in line for a show he's running. He passes the line, feet crunching through snow, and his ears strain to hear the music. _

_In Axel's dream, he turns the corner and stands before an immense metal door. Someone is playing guitar on the other side, and he presses his ear to the cold steel and feels the song enter his brain, his blood, his bones. The song is warm, and he leans back against the door, eyes closed, head back. _

_In Axel's dream, he sees nothing. He feels electric winter air on his face and warmth on his back from the door, snowflakes falling onto his face, his shoulders, his chest. He can hear people singing behind the door, and now the snow on his chest feels heavy; it presses him against the door and brushes past his neck, winter breeze in his hair, snowflakes alight on his lips, and he opens his eyes to find that there was never any snow at all._

_In Axel's dream, Roxas breathes lightly on his neck, bites gently at his ear, trails icy, tan fingers across bone-white jaw, and Axel can't move._

_Roxas looks up, and Axel stops breathing. He watches his hand move of its own accord to Roxas's hair, his face, and all the music is gone, the door is gone, he is kissing Roxas under a streetlight, it's dark and the light is orange and flickering. There is snow. _

_They are inside. Roxas's hands are in Axel's hair and his tongue is in Axel's mouth. They are backstage at Axel's first show, it is Act II Scene IV, and Roxas's lips feel soft to Axel. _

_They are lying down. Axel takes a breath and looks down at Roxas beneath him. They are in his bed, and he can hear the shower on in the bathroom. Riku is not there. Roxas's eyes are blue and his shoulder is white and Axel sighs and buries his head in Roxas's shoulder. He kisses his neck and closes his eyes and feels Roxas's arms hold him close. _

_In Axel's dream, he wakes up._

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Namine's boots crunched across the salt and slush in the parking lot as she headed toward the theater doors. The rest of the school was locked, of course, on a Saturday, and she was less than thrilled to be heading to a work party. Not particularly because of the work - she loved tech, and she loved lights, and she didn't mind working with Riku on the lighting design – but more because of the fact that she'd have to see Kairi. And of course, it wasn't that she didn't like Kairi – they were best friends. Maybe it was just seeing Kairi around Marluxia. Or maybe it was just _thinking _about Kairi being around Marluxia. Or maybe –

"Hey."

Namine looked up to find Kairi walking beside her.

"What's up?" she asked half-heartedly, digging gloved hands deep into her pockets.

"Not much," Kairi replied, looking down. "But I think we should talk."

"About?"

"Are you serious?"

Namine stopped walking and turned to Kairi, squinting in the winter sunlight. Kairi's hair tended to look more pink than red in direct sun, and Namine found herself more bothered than usual by the other girl's getup: black Ugg boots, white skinny jeans (with a bright pink belt), and a puffy magenta coat.

"Look," she said, staring at her own battered combat boots. "I don't know how else to say this, but you're really pissing me off."

Kairi narrowed her eyes. "Excuse me?"

"I've had a thing for Marly since, like, forever. You _know_ that."

"I-"

"I just think it's really shitty that someone who's _supposed_ to be my friend is gonna come in here, with your little… pink hair, and-and manicure, and jewelry, and try to get with a guy who you _know_ I've been thinking about for like, a really long time."

Kairi made a disgusted noise, holding a hand up to silence Namine.

"First of all, who _cares_ what color my hair is! Second, I haven't had my nails done in like, months. And third, you're being ridiculous. Can I just say, you _thinking_ about Marly and _not making a move_ is _not_ the same as if, like, you actually _did_ something about it, or acted like you seriously liked him. If you're not going to make a move on him, and he's obviously interested in me, am I supposed to just turn him down? Because you _might_ have liked him like, a year ago?"

"Obviously _interested_ in you? I-"

"On _top_ of that," Kairi continued, shifting her weight from one hip to the other. "Can I point out that _I_ had a crush on him _way_ before you did, and you seem to have conveniently forgotten that in your sudden infatuation with him?"

"Ugh!" Namine folded her arms across her chest. "Look, I didn't want to tell you, because I knew you had a little thing for him, but I totally hooked up with him over the summer. And yeah, I know you _kind of_ liked him, but I actually _know_ him, and I _really_ like him, so yeah, we hooked up! And I'm _trying_ to… pursue that. And you're getting in my way."

A silence fell between the two girls, Namine avoiding Kairi's glare.

"So you're mad at me because I'm going after a guy I've liked for a long time, who you hooked up with in the summer… when you knew I liked him?"

"Ugh! You always make _me_ sound like the bitch," Namine muttered, striding towards the doors once again.

Kairi managed to cut her off at the door, holding it shut as Namine attempted to pull it open anyway.

"Look," she said, putting herself between Namine and the door and forcing the blonde to look at her. "If this is how you're gonna be about it, then I think you should know… Marly and I hooked up at a party this summer too."

Namine narrowed her eyes. "What. Party."

"Luxord's party? In July? Remember, the one _you_ didn't wanna go to because you were pissed at Luxord about the stupid thing at the mall?"

Another silence fell, and Namine stared at the ground in thought for a moment before looking up.

"Well then I guess we're on even ground," she said slowly, tucking a strand of platinum blonde hair behind her ear. "May the best bitch win."

Kairi coughed in disbelief as Namine pushed past her into the theater, letting the door slam behind her as she headed to the costume room.

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Riku closed his eyes, attempting to find peace as he sat with his script in the house. Another freshman had just asked him how to load regular staples into the pneumatic staple gun, Namine had stormed into the theater in a terrible mood, Axel had been acting strange since he'd woken up that morning, he was hungry, he was behind on his sound cues, and all he wanted to do was get some work done.

Eyes still closed, he attempted to formulate a game plan in his head. _First, find Tifa. Ask her about the second platform, and how she wants it lit for the second half of Act I after it's moved. Then, find Namine, and ask her how she's going to accomplish whatever Tifa decides. Find Zexion or Demyx, figure out where they're at with compiling their effects. Ask Zexion what he's thinking about the thunder in the scene, the one with the thing, the- yeah. Yes or no on that one. Figure out what's wrong with Axel. Figure out-_

"Is this seat taken?"

Riku opened his eyes. A woman who looked about in her early twenties, pixie-cut black hair, fairly cute, was leaning over the seat in front of him, pointing at the seat next to him, where he'd put his backpack down. Around them, the entire auditorium was full of empty seats.

"Um, no, I guess not," he muttered, moving his backpack to his other side and watching idly as she hopped over the back of her seat to sit beside him. Upon getting settled, she turned and shot him a sunny smile, setting her overflowing purse in the seat on her other side.

"I'm Yuffie," she said brightly, holding out a hand to shake. "I'm Mr. Leonhart's younger sister!"

"Um, nice to meet you," Riku said weakly, shaking her hand and attempting to think of the best way out of the situation. "I'm Riku. But I have to go. Nice meeting-"

"Oh, is it okay that I'm here? I hope I'm not bothering you at all! Leon – I mean, Mr. Leonhart, he said it would be okay if I hung around his work for a bit if I didn't want to be sitting at home all alone. I mean, I have a _job_, I work at Macy's. I sell perfume. But I'm hoping to open my own resort someday! I know, cool, right? But I'm working on my degree. My business degree. I'm at CC right now, but I'm transferring to State after this year. It's just cheaper to go to Community College for your prereq's, ya know? But anyway, I'm just living at his place for a bit, couldn't _stand_ living with our parents anymore, and he said I can hang out here on my days off and, well, I just mean, you just might see me around here now."

Riku swallowed and blinked, unsure of how "I have to go" could be taken to mean "Tell me your life story".

"Okay," he said. "I'll be right back."

"Sorry!" Yuffie exclaimed, seeming not to notice Riku's hasty retreat. "I know you're busy! Okay, see you later!"

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Sora looked up as Riku strode into the green room, shutting the door hard behind him.

"What's up?" he asked, studying Riku's face. "You look a little stressed."

"Have you seen Tifa?" Riku replied, shaking his head and poking his head into the women's dressing room.

"Nada… I'm just working on my lines… I think Kairi and Marly are around here somewhere, they were trying to figure out something about one of her dresses, and I saw Xigbar doing… something. I don't remember. He was down here. Haven't seen Tifa, though."

Riku sighed, leaning against the doorway of the empty women's dressing room. After a moment of silence, he turned to Sora and spoke.

"Did you know Leonhart has a little sister?"

Sora looked up from his script with a smile. "No… is she here or something?"

Riku nodded slowly. "She's very much here. She reminds me of you."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"She wouldn't shut up."

Sora's eyes widened, then narrowed as he stared pointedly at his script. Riku watched straight-faced for a moment, then laughed.

"I was kidding, I was kidding, alright?" he admitted, approaching the table and pulling up a chair beside the brunet. "You shut up sometimes."

Sora continued to read his lines, purposefully ignoring Riku.

"So now I'm getting the cold shoulder from Sora Jacobs?"

"But you have to understand, Lola, money and love are inequal forces!"

"One of the worst lines of the play," Riku murmurmed, turning to face the door to the costume room as he heard voices travelling through from the other side.

"But you have to understand, but you have to understand, but you have to understand…"

"Can't you do that in your head?"

"But you have to understand, Lola, money and love are inequal forces!"

Riku was on the verge of ripping the script from Sora's hands when the nearing voices finally burst through the door. Kairi shot Riku a smile before tossing her gigantic purple coat onto one of the couches and turning to face Marluxia, who had followed her through the door carrying a tiny, sequined pink dress.

"Riku, this is the _only _acceptable dress in the entire costume room, but Marly's going to have to make _adjustments_ for it to fit me! Can you believe it?"

Riku blinked. "That's a dress?"

"Of course it is!" Kairi replied indignantly, ignoring the quiet "Where's the rest of it?" from Sora.

"It almost fits," Marluxia mumbled, shaking it out and holding it up for the others to see. "It's just a little bit too small…"

"Better suck it in, Kai," Sora snickered, shielding his head from her attempted slaps.

"It's not too small all around," she said, snatching the dress from Marluxia's fingertips. "I have to put it on anyway for Marly to fix it. Just _hold on_!"

With that, she disappeared into the women's dressing room, slamming the door behind her. In her wake, Marluxia dropped into the chair next to Riku, a look of deep exhaustion crossing his face.

"She's unbelievable," he said feebly. "She vetoed like, 20 dresses. They weren't glamorous enough."

"The pink sequins are really, um… Really…" Riku trailed off, unsure of the right word to use, and before he could come up with one, Kairi had banged back through the door wearing nothing but the tiny, tight pink dress, which she appeared to be falling out of.

"See?!" she cried, gesturing to her upper half. "My _boobs_ are too big! Marly!"

Sora attempted to choke back his laughter, turning back to his script as a last resort and avoiding Riku's eyes as Marluxia grabbed his tape measure and marker from the table and set to work figuring out Kairi's dilemma.

It was at this altogether unfortunate moment that Demyx and Axel burst through the door from backstage and Namine appeared in the doorway that Riku had originally come through, from the school hallway.

The scene seemed to freeze in time for a few seconds – Demyx and Axel both staring in disbelief at Kairi's attire, Marluxia appearing to be groping her, when in fact he was attempting to mark the dress, Sora with his head down on the table in silent laughter, and Riku watching Namine's face change from mildly frustrated to completely enraged.

"Ugh! Marly, come _on_, you can't do this with everyone _here_!" Kairi commanded, and before anyone could say otherwise, she'd dragged Marluxia from the room and slammed the dressing room door behind them.

Namine took a few measured steps into the room, her face clearly processing what she'd just seen, then dropped her backpack onto the table and sat down beside Sora without a word. Axel and Demyx took spots at the table as well, and no one spoke, save for Sora still trying to stop laughing.

"Was that-"

"Yes," Riku said flatly, cutting Demyx off before he could say anything that would make anyone any more stressed or upset.

The five sat quietly for another minute or so, at which point Axel decided he was safe to speak.

"So," he began apprehensively, "Demyx and I are hungry. Is anyone else? If so, what do we want to eat? Can we order in? Or who's going to go pick it up?"

Riku shrugged. "You know me. I'm good with whatever. Get a pizza."

Sora nodded. "Pizza, yeah."

"Alright, two votes for pizza. Demyx, you good with pizza? Namine?"

Namine continued to stare bitterly at the table. "I don't care. I'm just at a loss as to how someone in their right mind can be so skanky."

"Ouch," Demyx muttered under his breath, picking idly at his fingernails.

"Pizza it is," Axel said definitively. "Anyone wanna volunteer to get it?"

"Demyx," said Namine, fixing her glare on the blond. "Why don't _you_ go pick it up?"

Surprised that Namine had even spoken to him, Demyx perked up. "Oh! I would, but, it's just, I don't have a car or anything, I ride my bike to school. It's kind of cold, and I wouldn't really have anywhere to put the pizza…"

"Just put it in your basket," Namine replied. "You know, the little pink one on the front of your bike? With the bell and the ribbons?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, I just assumed you would have one."

Axel stood up abruptly, giving Namine a disgusted look. "C'mon, Demyx. I've got a car. Let's go."

As Demyx left the room, Axel turned back. "Look, I dunno what your deal is with Kairi, but taking your own personal bullshit out on other people is beyond fucked up. Jesus, Namine. Deal with it."

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Axel caught up to Demyx about halfway across the parking lot. The blond looked close to tears as he pulled on the handle to Axel's car impatiently, waiting for him to unlock it.

The car ride to the pizza place was uneventful; Demyx turned the music up loud and Axel only turned it down to try to explain that Namine was a bit of a loose cannon – that Demyx had done nothing wrong and when she was in a bad mood she was often mean for the sake of being mean. Demyx seemed to understand it well enough, and Axel took the long way back for the sake of conversation. The two clicked well as friends. Axel realized as he drove that they could talk about just about anything, and they spent the drive discussing music, life, friends, people, anything, really. Zexion, of course. It discouraged Demyx to try to work with someone so… unavailable. And yet, the tiny boy enthralled him. Axel did his best to bolster Demyx's defenses against the others. The blond had entered the scene at what appeared to be a rather tempestuous time for the group, but Axel was confident he would find his place in time.

They talked about Roxas, singing, music again, Demyx's music.

"What I really want is to someday be a musician, you know? Just play my music and get by doing that," he'd said, staring wistfully out the window.

"So do it," Axel had replied, downshifting around a corner. "Go for it, ya know? What's stopping you?"

"Are you crazy?" Demyx had asked. "I'll never be signed. I don't even have a way to record anything. My lyrics are… mediocre. I dunno."

"I'm telling you, just wait for Zex to warm up to you a little. He'd help you out, I know he would."

Pulling into a space at the school, Axel noticed Roxas outside on his cell phone, kicking at a hunk of ice on the sidewalk.

"Believe me," he said slowly, "I've always been a firm believer in the idea that… if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen."

Roxas looked up, waving vaguely at the two in the car, and Axel let out a small laugh. "I'll meet you inside, yeah?"

Demyx nodded, taking the pizza inside with him and leaving Axel to wait for Roxas.

"Yeah. Yeah, mom, I gotta go. I… Uh huh. No, I'm at rehearsal. Yeah. Umm… I'm not sure. You guys don't have to come. I mean, it's not a big deal. It's just a play. Yeah, no, that's… that's alright. It's- yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, mom, _mom_. I gotta go though, okay? Ok. O-kay. Kay. Alright. Bye, mom. Love you too. Bye. Yeah? Alright. Bye."

Roxas laughed as he flipped his phone shut, turning towards Axel, who had found a comfortable spot to sit on the bike rack.

"Parents," he said, shrugging.

"Yeah," Axel replied, letting himself smile back. He couldn't get the dream he'd had out of his head. Somehow, he'd thought talking to Roxas would be a good thing to do. Now he couldn't figure out why. He stared at the ground instead.

"What's up?" Roxas said eventually, hoisting himself onto the bike rack as well. "You guys got a pizza?"

"Yeah," Axel said again. "Yeah, Namine's in one of her little dragonbitch rages, so I figured I'd get Demyx out of the way, you know, go get food, give her some time to cool off."

"Mmm…"

"So, uh, how're you liking the whole theater thing?"

Roxas nodded, kicking at the hardened snow near his feet. "It's good, you know? It's different than I expected. I never thought I'd be doing this."

"Me neither."

"Axel-"

"What?"

Axel shook his head, cursing himself internally for responding too quickly. "Sorry."

Roxas blushed a little, speaking once again to his feet instead of Axel. "I… Yeah, never mind. I'm just, um… I'm just glad I know you again."

"I…" Axel gripped the bike rack tightly beneath his fingers. "Me too," he said eventually, trying to block out the images from his dream, the urge to touch Roxas's frosty cheek, to brush the snow off his eyelashes and taste the warm, salty skin where his shoulder met his neck.

The two boys studied each other for another moment, then Roxas grinned, and Axel wasn't really listening, but he said something about being cold, and Axel heard himself say something about food. He wasn't sure he felt the ground beneath his feet walking inside, but at least he remembered to hold the door for Roxas.

Together, they walked back to the theater.


	8. Friends

**AN: **As usual, thank you guys a million for reading, and please feel free to leave a review with whatever you're thinking. :) Things are about to pick up for Dig, so I'm pretty stoked for what's to come. Hope you guys enjoy the chapter, and thanks again for reading!

* * *

  
"Ah! Sora, what the _fuck_!"

Sora snickered, digging his spoon into another section of the grapefruit half he was theoretically eating. It amused him to no end that every time grapefruit juice squirted out of the fruit, it seemed to hit Riku in the eye.

"Fuck! Sora, I'm serious, go sit on the fucking chair or something!"

Axel raised his eyebrows, glancing sideways from the Mario Kart game in front of him to the two quarrelling boys on the couch beside him. On the one hand, Riku's excessive cursing was getting obnoxious. On the other hand, every time Sora squirted grapefruit juice in Riku's eye, Riku veered off course, and Axel was looking forward to his Yoshi coming in first.

Silence. Mario Kart tunes. Then, "God _dammit_, Sora!"

Axel internally gave himself a high-five as he zoomed toward the finish, holding the controller steady despite the jostling of the couch as Riku attempted to wrench the grapefruit from Sora's kung-fu grip.

Since the beginning of rehearsals, Sora had started showing up around their house. It had started with about once a week, and now that Riku had gotten used to him, he seemed to be around quite a bit more than that. Axel had grown accustomed to the brunet's presence as well, and he enjoyed having Sora around for times like this, where they could sort of playfully gang up on Riku. Axel grinned as he won the race. Sora had retreated to the kitchen with his grapefruit, and Riku was eyeing the screen with an expression not unlike that of a wet cat.

"Rematch," he grumbled, taking his spot on the couch again. "Don't even _try_ to tell me that one counts."

"Is it my fault-"

"I was _handicapped_!"

Axel sighed, leaning back. "Just because my _skills_ are so… well honed…"

"Uh, okay, alright, let's just stop there," Riku said, rolling his eyes as he restarted the race. "We'll see."

Axel laughed, yawning as he resettled himself on the couch. They raced in silence for a moment before Sora re-entered the living room, sipping a Dr. Pepper.

"Riku," he said, setting his soda on the coffee table.

"Yes."

"We need to talk."

"About?"

Riku refused to be distracted this time, and he attempted to ignore Sora's blue eyes boring into his brain from the side.

"Rikku."

"Rikku? Like, the blonde chick? The dumb one?"

Sora looked grumpy, taking another sip of his soda. "She's not _dumb_, but yes, her."

Riku shrugged. "What about her?"

"What do you think of her?"

"Ummm…" Riku focused intently on a tight corner, deftly avoiding a shell Axel had shot at him. "Nothing? I dunno, I don't think anything about her. She doesn't seem too smart."

Sora sighed dramatically, sitting back against the armrest. "Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Ha!" Axel exclaimed, pumping his fist in victory as he shrank Riku with a lightning bolt.

"But-"

"Sora, I feel like we've had this conversation before."

Sora was quiet for a moment, watching the game.

"Well," he said eventually, "I think you'd be cute with her. Especially since you guys have the same- okay, okay, _roughly_ the same name."

Riku actually took the time to pause the game in order to give Sora a look that conveyed as much disgust as he could muster.

"I guess that's a no?"

"That's a _hell_ no," Riku muttered, going back to the game.

Axel studied the screen quizzically for a moment, remembering what Namine had said about Riku's lack of female dates, or any dates at all.

"Why not?" he asked, finally taking Namine's comments into actual consideration.

"What do you mean why not? She's just not my type," Riku said, shrugging again.

"Huh…" Axel lapsed into silence again, despite the fact that he was losing terribly now. "You don't really have a type, do you?"

Riku leaned back, having won the race. "What are you talking about? What the hell is this, interrogation day? Seriously!"

"Well it's just… you haven't dated _anyone_ since… Kairi. In the 8th grade." Axel stared pointedly at the wall. "Why not?"

"Oh, I've _dated_ other girls, they just all ended up the same way things ended with Kairi," Riku said, putting down his controller.

"What way is that?" Sora asked, taking another long drink.

Riku sighed. "Girls all want the same thing," he said definitively. "And the guy that they want is not congruent with the guy who I am."

"Um," Axel said, at great length. "What do you mean?"

"They all want some simpering, obedient _boyfriend_ type, who'll pay for _everything_ and buy them things for no reason and spend every second of every day with them, or on the phone with them, or thinking about them and writing about it in a shared journal, or something equally vomit-inducing!"

"Well, it's not like all girls are exactly the same," Sora volunteered. Riku simply made an exasperated noise.

"They all expect me to be like that, and then they get all angry when they realize it's not how I am, like 'Riku's such a jerk, oh, Riku, you only wanted one thing!' They say I have _commitment_ problems. We're in effing _high school_. It's like, I'm sorry you don't like your math homework, what do you want me to do about it? I'm sorry you have a cold, you know, what am I supposed to _do_ about it? Who _cares_?"

"Actually," said Axel, "I can distinctly remember a few times you've made soup for me when I've been sick. That sort of thing."

"That's _different_," Riku replied, indignant. "Because you're my _brother_."

"And?"

"And I care about you!"

Sora's eyes widened. "And you don't care about your girlfriends?"

"No!" Riku fumed. "I mean, not really! No offense to them, and not to be incredibly, I don't know, asshole-ish, but no, I don't really care about them that way! I mean, come _on_, like I said, we're in high school! It's not like we're going to get fucking married or something. I thought it was common knowledge, dating in high school is pretty much just a vehicle for people to hook up. Obviously I wouldn't date a girl I don't like at all, but the point of this kind of relationship is _not_ drama and bullshit and anger, it's just to have a goddamn good time. And lately, I don't even see the fucking point, when all girls seem to want is drama and bullshit. And anger."

Axel fiddled with his controller. Yoshi made happy noises on the screen, and he looked up to briefly meet Sora's eyes in a moment of "Gosh! Alright then!" sentiment.

Looking back and forth between Sora and Axel, Riku shrugged.

"What?" he said, and he didn't understand when the Sora and Axel just laughed.

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Shortly after the awkward girlfriend conversation, the boys had noticed it was about time to head over to the school for another day of glorious weekend rehearsal. They had been warned that today would be mostly a dancing day for the actors, and that the crew would have to somehow work their construction in around the trainwreck of a finale they'd be practicing.

Riku was immediately flagged down by Namine upon entering the theater to talk lights, and the two of them disappeared to the back lighting cage shortly thereafter for the remainder of rehearsal.

Axel, unsure of exactly what to do and far too lazy to assist in any set construction before he'd finished his coffee, had taken a seat beside Mr. Leonhart's little sister in the house, and spent the first couple hours of rehearsal critiquing the dancing with her.

Yuffie had brought several perfume samples from her workplace, and she was strangely fixated on finding which one teen boys found the most appealing. Axel was partial to a rather apple-scented one, although according to Yuffie, both Luxord and Xigbar had been entranced by the latest Britney Spears scent.

"Maybe it's a gay thing," she'd said, and he hadn't bothered to ask how she knew.

Propping his snowy shoes on the seat in front of him (he could just hear Tifa chiding him for it in his head), he settled in to watch Kairi drag Roxas around the stage.

Mr. Strife had done an excellent job of choreographing the most bizarre and ungainly finale in the history of musical theatre, and Roxas seemed to be having rather more of a hard time with it than just about anyone else in the cast. While his singing voice had wowed everyone involved in the show, his skills as far as dancing, or what Mr. Strife considered to be dancing, were impressively bad.

Axel was about 90% sure that Yuffie was saying something to him, but he was far too busy watching Mr. Strife attempting to coax Roxas into sliding down a banister with full-out jazz hands to actually listen to her.

"Hello? Axel? Paging Axel, as thrilling as this musical is, I have another earth-shattering question for you!"

Blinking a few times, Axel finally inclined his head slightly in Yuffie's direction. "Hmm?"

"I brought cologne samples too. Which one do you like best? I have this nice Dior, and this one doesn't have a name, and here's some off-brand called… Midnight Desire. And um, Valentino, here."

Axel eyed the numerous tester strips she'd laid out on the armrest between them, and half-heartedly picked up the last one to smell. He was pleasantly surprised, actually, and found that even after sniffing hesitantly at the others, he preferred the first one he'd smelled to the rest.

"This one's good," he said, pocketing the tester strip. Before he could ask again what it was, though, he heard a voice calling his name, and if he leaned his head backwards far enough, he could see Demyx standing at the edge of the balcony, beckoning for him to come up to the booth. Downing the last of his coffee, he stood, and after thanking Yuffie for the lovely scent experience, he trudged his way upstairs.

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"So, I'm gonna need you to help throw some body mics on people really quick."

Axel nodded slowly, fingering the edge of his empty coffee cup and wondering where he could casually leave it for someone else to throw away. Zexion seemed tired today, and he held three body mics in his hands.

"Which people," Axel said eventually. The energy in the room was so low that there didn't seem to be room for question marks, only statements that required answers. Demyx was spinning lethargically in circles in his desk chair, waiting for something to load onto Zexion's computer, and Zexion had turned to look at the stage, apparently deep in thought.

"Well, I need them to know how to dance with their mics on. Tifa wants them mic'd at every rehearsal from now on, so they can get used to having them on with their costumes, etcetera, etcetera."

"Uh huh."

"So…" Zexion clicked his tongue against his teeth, closed his eyes, opened them again. "Kairi, Roxas, and the blonde girl. I'd say Sora, but he knows what he's doing. I guess Kairi does too, but whatever."

"Excellent decision. Truly. Couldn't have said it better myself."

Zexion raised one eyebrow. "Um, okay. So… I'm gonna delegate Kairi to Demyx, because I don't want to deal with her. And you can take either blonde chick or Roxas. Actually," a thin-lipped smile now began to spread slowly across Zexion's face. "Why don't you take Roxas? I think I'll handle blonde chick. I need to learn her name, after all, don't I?"

Axel took one of the body mics from Zexion's hands with as much nonchalance as he could muster, and noted with internal glee on his way down the stairs that he'd left his empty coffee cup next to the light board.

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"Cut! Cut! Alright, stop! Everybody, everyone just- just stop. I'm getting an-an important technical… technical message, from the… from the sound crew. I need, um, what's that? We need body mics! All of you, we need- oh, you have them? Correction, correction, we _have_ body mics, body mics for all! For- oh, just for a select few… I, alright," Mr. Strife appeared to be losing steam, having stopped the entire rehearsal to speak to Zexion on the side of the stage. "Alright, I need Kairi, Roxas, and Rikku. Everyone else, why don't you all just, I don't know, take a little break or something. Be back in twenty minutes. Take a lunch. I don't know."

Defeated, Mr. Strife wandered off the stage into the house, where he slumped into a seat beside the disheveled, olive green messenger bag he'd taken to lugging around with him wherever he went. Inside the bag, he kept his everyday necessities: wallet, cell phone, keys, travel-sized bottle of mouthwash, three different brands of cinnamon gum, a bag of green gummy bears, a battered cd player (and equally battered pair of headphones), and of course, his notebook. Cloud Strife did not always know exactly what he was doing in this world, but he did know that wherever he went without his notebook was a place of extreme discomfort, and anyway, it was essentially his manuscript, and every professional writer should bring their manuscript with them everywhere, right? In case the mood struck to write.

Chewing on a gummy bear, he opened his notebook to the most recent page of writing, and set about trying to cure his writer's block in the twenty minute break he had just decided to give himself. He did so by slowly and methodically eating his gummy bears and keeping his mind as clear as he could possibly make it. After entering this sort of meditative state, he would simply sit and wait – for what, he was never quite sure. He assumed it would come to him. His novel had hit a wall; the main character was stuck in an airport, and the love of his life was, well, she was actually just outside the airport, well, it was all rather hard to explain, he thought. You just had to read the book to understand.

_In any case_, he thought, noting with displeasure that he would need to buy more gummy bears in the next few days (more realistically, the next few hours), _As-of-yet-unnamed-protagonist needs to somehow get outside, and he needs to see As-Of-Yet-Unnamed-Love-Of-Protagonist's-Life, only he needs to do so in a way that will allow him to-_

"Are you okay?"

Cloud opened one eye to find his latest co-worker standing beside him, looking uncharacteristically concerned.

Clearing his throat, he sat up a little bit straighter in his seat and stuffed his bag of gummy bears back into his messenger back. "Yes. Yeah, I'm- I'm just fine, just, well, just trying to figure out some… business…"

Leon nodded disinterestedly. "Business," he repeated, clearly unconvinced.

"Writing business," Cloud explained, as though this actually explained anything, and when Leon simply stared at him, he continued. "I'm just trying to get past a spot in my writing that I seem to be kind of, well, kind of stuck at. Here," he said, and he handed his notebook to Leon. "It's just some ideas on this page, but… yeah."

Leon reviewed the latest page with questionable engagement, then blinked a few times and handed the notebook back to Cloud. "Why doesn't he just go outside because his plane has landed? I don't understand why he's stuck."

"Well, because, um… Because…"

Cloud had never really thought of it that way before.

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Axel was alone in a dressing room with Roxas, holding a body mic and wondering how the blond had managed to make a brown, green, and pink plaid shirt look good.

"That's quite a shirt," he managed, leaning against the wall as Roxas shut the door.

Roxas laughed. "Yeah, Marluxia was thrilled to hand me this one," he said. "It's supposed to be bad, though. I actually, um, in the show, I'm going to have a black shirt underneath it, so I end up losing this one, but for today they just have me in my regular clothes."

Axel nodded. "Yeah," he said, and he handed the mic to Roxas. "I guess just put the box in your pocket, or clip it on your belt, where you can. Somewhere inconspicuous, and then, um, you'll want to route the wire up underneath your shirt. And clip the mic on your collar."

"Alright… So, box in pocket, check. Wire in shirt…"

Axel wasn't sure if he should look away or not, but he didn't think he was really going to. Roxas was pulling his shirt up, pushing the wire past the neckline of his t-shirt, and Axel was momentarily captivated by the creamy whiteness of Roxas's stomach, the definition of his muscled chest (_Sports, _Axel thought), the gentle curve of his side-

Roxas dropped his shirt back into place, straightening it out and adjusting the clip of the microphone on his collar.

"Good?" he asked, and with Axel's thumbs-up, he grinned. "That wasn't so hard. Just gotta get used to having this box on my belt… it's kinda heavy."

"For sure," Axel agreed, remembering his first experience with body mics. "My first show, I thought it would be alright if I clipped it on this girl's skirt, it-it was a little skirt, um, it didn't really go well. The weight of the box kept pulling the skirt down, and, well, Lockheart was less than pleased."

Then Roxas was laughing, and Axel was telling more stories, and the two were joking with each other. For a moment, before they opened the door, Axel felt a twinge of the way they'd been before. Roxas seemed to make eye contact whenever possible, and as he reached for the doorknob, he brushed against Axel's arm for what seemed like slightly longer than was absolutely necessary.

_It's almost like he's flirting with me_, Axel thought, and then, coming to his senses, _it's almost like… we're friends. _


	9. Hello, Bus!

**AN: **Well, Merry Christmas, everyone. Also, Happy Hanukkah, although I'm well aware that Hanukkah started a few days ago. At the risk of oversharing here, I found out today that due to aforementioned health problems, I've sustained semipermanent nerve damage in the lower half of one of my legs, so my holidays have clearly been going just fantastically. In any case, I bring this up in a more upbeat context - I want to say thank you, as always, for reading and for your reviews. Reading the reviews you guys leave on here really makes my day a little brighter, and right now I can't do much of anything because of my leg, so that's a definite plus. :)  
Also, this thing that shows you what countries people are accessing your stuff from truly blows my mind. Seriously, the fact that someone in Brunei is reading Dig is one of the coolest things ever, at least for me. If you are the one person from Brunei, and you are reading this, you absolutely rock my world. Also, everyone else.  
Anyways, Happy Holidays to all of you guys, and without any further ado, I give you Chapter 9, in which some shit goes down. Thanks for reading, and if the mood strikes, feel free to leave a review and let me know what you're thinking. :)

* * *

As if mid-term week wasn't hard enough already, the troops had braved not only day after day of tests but five evenings of grueling rehearsals, and Riku had finally cracked. All the stress had built up on his shoulders until finally, on Friday, his immune system had broken down and succumbed to the nasty cold he'd been holding off all week. Thus, when this Saturday morning rolled around, Riku waved goodbye to Axel as he headed to crew, and settled himself instead on the living room couch with a mug of tea and the entire first season of Heroes.

Spending the past week studying, or at least looking like he was studying, however, had had the complete opposite effect on Axel; he was unbelievably restless and determined to do something fun that night. Before leaving the house, he checked with his dad to make sure it would be alright if Namine spent the night, and decided to spend some of his seemingly endless energy walking to school instead of taking the car.

As thrilling as Kairi and Namine's escalating rivalry was, Axel was becoming seriously tired of listening to Namine bitch, and he had resolved to reclaim his best friend and do something that would take her mind completely off of Marluxia and Kairi.

Slamming the theater door, he couldn't help but smile, and as he approached Namine at the table saw, his smile grew into a wide grin. He stood by her shoulder and waited for her to turn around.

After a minute of silent measuring, she looked up at him through her safety goggles.

"What are you grinning about?" she asked darkly, turning back to her sheet of plywood and marking another spot with Sharpie.

"We're hanging out tonight," Axel replied. "You're spending the night."

When she looked up again to respond, he held up a finger to continue.

"We're going to the club," he said definitively, and, his grin only growing, he stepped purposefully out of the shop to find something productive to do.

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Demyx stared idly out the window of the booth, watching Axel being flagged down by a freshman girl who needed help with a door on stage.

_At least he has something to do…_

Zexion had been searching all morning for a certain effect he'd sworn he'd brought on a CD from home, and Demyx had exhausted all the possibilities for anything productive that he actually knew how to do. He had spent the past half hour spinning in first one direction, then the other, on his desk chair, and seeing if the dizziness in both directions cancelled each other out.

About forty-five seconds ago, Kairi had entered the booth, slammed down her fuchsia backpack, and stalked over to the window, where she was clearly on the verge of saying something to the room at large. The room at large, of course, consisted solely of Demyx and Zexion, neither of whom felt particularly delighted at the idea of anything Kairi had to say at the moment.

"You know," she said testily, and Demyx felt his heart sink a little more, "You would _think_ that if someone were being called a _skank_ behind her back, that out of _all _the people in the theater, she wouldn't have to find out from some _random sophomore_ in the chorus! A _boy_, no less!"

"Hmm," Demyx said, avoiding her accusatory glare. "That sucks."

Kairi made an indignant noise and turned back to the window, where Namine could be seen dragging the plywood she had previously been cutting out onto the stage.

"What is she even _wearing_? I mean, honestly!"

Demyx leaned over the board to get a better look. Namine appeared to be wearing an old pair of men's jeans, which had long ago been covered in numerous layers of dried paint from past shows, and had a few significant holes in them. Despite the black leather belt she'd paired them with, they continued to sag, revealing red and green plaid boxers, and of course, she wore a variation of the same top every time she came to crew – a graying wifebeater, through which a black sports bra could be seen.

"Well," he said, "To be fair, she _is _working with lumber and paint. It's not like she wears that to school."

"I mean, she's wearing _boxers_, for crying out loud!" Kairi continued, seeming not to have heard Demyx at all. "_Boxers_, Demyx! Would you date a girl who wore the same underwear as you?!"

_Probably not, considering I haven't dated a girl since I was 14 years old._

"I dunno, Kairi," he said slowly, turning in his chair to see what Zexion was doing.

The other boy looked up at the sound of the squeaky chair, and while Kairi was facing the other direction, Demyx gave him a pleading look.

"I think I must have left the cd at home," Zexion said, shoving the box he'd been going through back into the storage closet. "I can't really go on without this effect, and it'll be a bitch and a half to get it from the internet, so I'm going to catch a bus and go get it."

"You're leaving?" Kairi said, pouting. "But who am I gonna _talk_ to if you guys leave? Demyx, you'll stay, right?"

Demyx's eyes widened, and he stared at Zexion, hoping desperately for salvation.

"Actually, I'm going to need his help," Zexion said briskly, getting to his feet. "C'mon, Demyx. We'll be back, Kairi. Good luck with the whole skank thing."

Kairi was clearly at a loss for words, and Demyx wasted no time grabbing his stuff and following Zexion out the door, thrilled not only to be escaping Kairi and his infinite boredom, but also that Zexion had even extended the invitation.

Outside the school, Zexion checked his watch. "Walk quickly," he said, crunching across the parking lot. "If we hurry, we can make the next bus. Otherwise, we'll be waiting for 40 minutes."

Hurrying after Zexion, it started to sink into Demyx's brain that he was actually going to the other boy's house.

_Zexion invited me to his house? Zexion… is actually open to the idea of me being in his house? Zexion-_

They ran the last block to the bus stop, arriving just as the last person in line was getting onto the bus.

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The bus ride had been uneventful.

Zexion had spent the time pondering what on earth had possessed him to bring Demyx along, and effectively cutting off any attempts the other boy made at conversation. He noted, after a strangely quiet 15 minutes, that the blond looked a little on the sick side. He'd been sneezing all day, and now, as they stood up to get off the bus, Zexion realized how undeniably tired he looked. He wondered if Demyx would start complaining.

It also occurred to Zexion, as they turned onto his street, that he might be a little bit ashamed of where he lived. Across the street, a large dog barked at them through a front window, and the modest house that Zexion's family rented was about a quarter of the size of most of the kids' houses from school. Technically, they lived out of district, and Zexion had had to put in an application to attend Colebury instead of the high school that served his area.

He let Demyx enter the house first, and let the screen door slam. Nodding hello to the babysitter (a younger teen girl who lived on the block), he directed Demyx through the kitchen, down the hall, and into his room, where he ordered his youngest brother out and pointedly shut the door.

"So," he said, dropping his backpack to the floor and approaching a well-worn dresser on the other side of the room. "This is my room. It might take me a couple minutes to find this, so you can sit down. If you want. My bed's the bottom bunk."

Demyx nodded, taking in the room around him. Against one wall there was the dresser, and a set of bunk beds. The opposite wall housed a third bed and another dresser, and between them, the far wall opposite the door had room only for a desk and a window. Demyx set his backpack beside Zexion's and gingerly took a seat on the bottom bunk. He had always enjoyed seeing people's rooms, in a totally non-creepy way.

Maybe it was because he spent a considerable amount of time in his own room that he felt that way, but he had always felt that you could tell a lot about a person by their personal space. Some people kept their rooms immaculately clean at all times, artwork carefully displayed on the walls, etc. Maybe because they just liked it that way, or maybe as part of their own self-image, that sort of thing. Demyx had always viewed his room as a sort of haven, where he didn't have to put up any fronts, and he could completely relax. For this reason, his room was often in a state of mild disarray, and the only things on the walls were a landscape painting he'd inherited from a late grandparent and a few newspaper articles he'd found interesting. His bulletin board was completely covered with just about anything he could put up (foreign money, drawings he'd made, drawings his friends had made, sheet music, interesting quotes, comics), and his bookshelf was overflowing with books. He kept his guitar next to his bed, and covered his bed in the most comfortable, warm blankets he could find.

Lying back on Zexion's bed, he kicked off his shoes and took a look around. The pillow was perfect, in his opinion – not too squishy, not too hard – and the sheets were blue and green striped. A giant quilt lay across the top, and it was so well-worn that the sturdy fabric felt soft under Demyx's fingers. The bottom bunk lent a cozy feel to the area, and he noticed Zexion had written things on the boards of the bed frame above his. Tracing the letters with his fingers, Demyx read the closest one. Scrawled in Sharpie directly above the pillow were the words: "Life is a series of choices".

Demyx considered this for a moment, then closed his eyes. Sunlight was filtering in through the blinds of the back window, and the whole situation just made Demyx sleepy. He'd been feeling sick all day anyway, and lying on Zexion's bed just made him more tired.

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By the time Zexion finally found his cd, he'd almost forgotten Demyx was in the room. The blond had been unnaturally quiet for the past hour or so, and Zexion was actually sort of alarmed to find that he had fallen asleep.

Fiddling with the cd, he studied the blond's sleeping form for a moment before moving off to find his computer. He would deal with that issue later, he thought, and he set about finding the effect he needed and continuing the compilation effort. He kept up the hard work for another good long while before he bothered to look at the clock again and, noticing at that point that it was actually about 5 o'clock, he decided to check on Demyx again.

He was in essentially the same position, but now Zexion noted goosebumps on the blond's arm. Without really thinking, he gently moved the quilt out from under Demyx and laid it back out across him. Then, avoiding thinking about what the gesture meant for him, he went to let the babysitter go home and make dinner for his siblings.

Having set up his pasta to cook, he stared at the pot for a moment before making an executive decision and heading back to his room. Crouching beside the bed, he grimly shook Demyx's shoulder, unsure of how to wake someone up nicely.

"Nnhh… what… oh!"

Demyx turned red as he woke up, pushing the quilt off of him. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- I- what time is it?"

"You looked cold," Zexion said awkwardly. "So I, um, I put the quilt on you. It's almost 6. Are you staying for dinner?"

"Um," said Demyx. "Um, I, uh… is that alright?"

"I've made enough pasta for leftovers, so there'll be enough for you," Zexion replied, standing up. "You should come out to eat it, though. I dunno where the kids are gonna eat, but I don't generally eat in bed. I don't like the crumbs, and the dishes, and, well, you should just get up now."

"Of-Of course," Demyx said, hurrying out of the bed and turning to smooth out the covers.

By the time he'd straightened up, Zexion had already left the room.

Dinner at Zexion's house was both awkward and educational for Demyx. He spent most of the meal talking to Zexion's 5-year-old sister, Maggie, while Zexion ate in silence beside him.

Demyx learned, over the course of about an hour, that Zexion was called "Z" because his older brother (of whom's existence Demyx also learned) had called him that before he went to jail; that he and his older brother had the same father, and the rest of the kids had a different one; that the room he'd been in was not only Zexion's room, but also the room of JD, age 11, and Matt, age 7; that the three girls shared a room as well; and that Zexion was the best big brother in the world.

"The best?" he'd asked, with exaggerated disbelief.

Maggie nodded vigorously, stabbing another piece of pasta with her fork. "Z's the best," she repeated, and Demyx glanced sideways at Zexion, who appeared to be completely engrossed in his food.

"What makes him the best?" Demyx asked, cringing a little as Zexion clanked his silverware loudly on his plate.

"Um, well, he's just the best," Maggie said, and then she giggled a little. "He scares the monsters away, anyway."

"Monsters?"

"At night… duh."

"Oh, right, _those _monsters," Demyx said, nodding sagely. "He scares them away?"

"Uh huh. And, um, if any of us get thirsty, or scared at night, Z will get up and get us water! Or um, or scare away the monsters. Or just, um, he just makes everything okay. When it's not okay. He's the best big brother, that's all."

"JD and Matt are good too," Zexion corrected her, and Demyx noted that it was the most he'd heard out of the other boy in hours.

"Not as good as you!" Maggie declared, dropping pasta onto the floor in her haste to reply. "Xemmy was good too, before he went to jail. He's still good, um, I'm sure he'll still be good when he comes back."

Zexion sighed. "Yeah," he said, after a while. "I think he was probably the actual best big brother. I'm kind of a stand-in."

"Well, you do alright against the monsters," Demyx said. Zexion looked up sharply, and he realized maybe his remark had been out of place. "Sorry."

"No, it's- um," Zexion trailed off. He shook his head and stood up from the table. "I finished compiling everything for the first act, so, uh, I guess we'll just get a head start on Monday on the second one."

"Oh! Wow, alright. Um, thanks. Sorry I… fell asleep."

"Don't worry about it," Zexion said. He took the plates from the table and transferred them to the sink, then headed back into his room, Demyx hastily following suit.

Demyx entered the room to find Zexion already turning around to come back out, placing Demyx's backpack into his hands for him and shutting the door behind them.

At the front door, Demyx paused for a moment before leaving.

"I had a lot of fun talking with your sister," he said, and when Zexion's eyes turned sharp again, he didn't shy away from them. "Maybe sometime I could make dinner for you guys," he continued cautiously. "I'm actually not a terrible cook."

Zexion was unsure what to do when his glare didn't deter the blond. After another moment of awkward silence, he nodded, and let go of something in the back of his brain that had been holding him back, and allowed himself a tight-lipped smile. "That would be nice," he said, and he opened the door for Demyx to leave.

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Namine cleaned up nice when she wanted to, Axel thought, and he climbed off of the bus into the snowy night. He'd left crew a bit early to pick up the car from home, then driven back to grab Namine, gone to her house to pick up clothes, and back to his house to have dinner with the family.

They'd watched a movie with Riku and waited patiently for all four parents to go to sleep. Riku had proclaimed himself too sick and tired to go upstairs, and had made a bed for himself on the couch for the night, and it was at this point that Axel had looked at Namine, and Namine had looked at Axel, and they had gone upstairs to get dressed.

Axel had gone to say goodnight to everyone and then closed the bedroom door, and he and Namine climbed out the window around 11:00, Namine giggling as they half-ran down the street to the nearest bus stop.

She'd picked out her clothes that afternoon at home: a short, tight white dress and spiky white heels, white glitter eyeshadow on her eyelids and glossy white polish on her nails. Her hair finally matched her platinum-blonde roots, and Axel was unsure how someone could go from looking the way she had at rehearsal to the way she did in his room so quickly. He had told her she didn't have to get particularly dressed up for this club, but she had wanted to. Something to take her mind off of Marly, off of Kairi.

"I want to look _nice_," she'd said, winking at Axel in his bathroom mirror. "Maybe _I'll_ find a guy tonight!"

Axel stifled a laugh. "I wouldn't count on it, Nam. Gay club? You might find a nice lady..."

Nothing had been able to put her off, though, and she'd insisted on the outfit despite the fact that it made Axel look positively underdressed. He'd thrown on a nice pair of dark grey jeans and brightly colored Nikes, a tight-ish black t-shirt and a jacket he could leave with Rinoa behind the bar. Despite her complaints, Axel had forced Namine to bring her jacket as well, and she foisted it off on him shortly before they entered the club, not wanting to ruin her outfit with a large, blue coat.

Axel had expected to have to explain away his underage friend at the door. He'd been going to the club for so long that it was understood he could come in, but he didn't expect it to be quite so easy to sneak in another kid. However, Namine had strode purposefully ahead of him as they approached the door, and she'd been let in without even being carded before Axel had even caught up to her. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about her waltzing so easily into _his_ club, but he got over it quickly enough as he stepped into the warmth of the bar and felt the bass run through his bones.

Taking Namine by the arm, he directed her to the end of the bar, where he waited patiently to introduce her to Rinoa and hand off their jackets.

"I've never been to anyplace like this before!" Namine had said, shouting into Axel's ear to be heard over the music. "I mean, it's like… a real bar, and all."

Axel simply grinned and nodded. "I love it here. This is where I met Zexion, actually. Remember? I told you I met him at the club? This is the club."

Namine nodded, looking around at the dance floor and the other patrons. "Can we drink?" she asked eventually, and in response, Axel bought her an AMF and dragged her out to dance.

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_Take another shot with me!_

_Axel, take a shot with me!_

_Mm… up for another shot?_

_Hey, take a shot with me?_

_Let's… heh… A-Axel, I wanna take a shot! Of course I can take it! Axel, come on!_

Axel couldn't remember how many shots he'd taken with Namine, but he was definitely feeling it, and she wasn't so much dancing anymore as using the people around her to keep herself upright. Draping her arms around Axel's neck, she swayed completely off the beat and succeeded mostly in breathing tequila all over his face.

Axel hadn't been this drunk in quite some time, and he couldn't remember exactly how it worked. He felt light, but a little bit too light, and the heavy bass blasting up through his sneakers was the only thing he felt connecting him to the ground. Namine's arms were inhibiting his ability to move, and she was saying something to him but he couldn't hear her over the music, and then she was kissing him, and he really didn't mind it.

Her tongue lifted Southern Comfort from his teeth, and her fingers tangled in his hair, and Axel realized where he'd recognized that apple scented perfume from as it surrounded him and blocked his senses, and everything was apple and tequila and glitter and white.

Axel noticed a moment later than he should have that he was starting to fall over, and he stumbled off of the dance floor laughing, Namine's hand clasped tightly in his own.

"I think I'm drunk," he slurred, and Namine was laughing too, and her lips were very pink and shiny and her dress was very white and then they were at the bus stop and it was cold because silly Namine had forgotten to get their jackets, and Axel wanted to make snowballs and throw them off the overpass onto the freeway, so they did that, and Namine's heels were making her feet hurt, so she took them off, but then her feet got too cold so she put them back on.

Then the bus was coming and Axel and Namine waved at it from a block away and Namine was jumping up and down and laughing, and Axel stumbled back onto the sidewalk.

"Hello, bus!" she was shouting, and he took her frosty hand in his and pulled her out of the street and under the streetlight. It was very foggy and they boarded the last bus back towards their neighborhood and sat at the very back.

Then they were kissing again on the bus and Namine was in his lap and again, Axel didn't really mind it. He kissed her and thought about Roxas, and since he was drunk, he thought about Roxas with much more clarity than he did when he was sober, and without any complexity, and it was very simple to Axel that he very much wanted Roxas back, so he kissed Namine some more and they missed their bus stop and got off at the next one.

It took them much longer to walk back to the house than it should have, mainly because Axel had realized very clearly that he wanted Roxas back more than anything in the world, so naturally he took every opportunity to pull Namine to his chest and lean against a car and kiss her with everything he wanted desperately to give to Roxas.

He remembered walking this street in the summer with Roxas, and when Namine leaned back on the big oak tree, her reddened eyes half-lidded and her cheeks pink with cold, he could hardly see her past the memory of Roxas leaning there, leering at him in summer night shadows before reaching for his arms. He – good God, he was drunk – he felt Namine's hands touching his face, pulling him down, and at the same time, he felt Roxas's fingertips on the back of his neck, Roxas's tongue pushing urgently at his closed lips, and he felt dirty and guilty for it but he kissed Roxas back in his memories and kissed Namine in the present with a need she knew was not for her.

Axel nearly fell out of the tree trying to climb back inside, but they eventually made it in, and got the window closed, and kicked off their shoes, and as Axel let his head fall back onto his pillow, he felt very, very dizzy. He was aware in the back of his mind of his clothes coming off and he tried to ignore everything he felt by drowning it all in her. Axel was blurry, and Namine was blurry, and all he could smell was apple, and he squeezed his eyes shut and then Namine was pulling the covers over them both and cuddling against his shoulder. He only got dizzier with his eyes closed, and when it got to be just about too much to bear, he opened them again, and it was 6 hours later.

Axel awoke on Sunday morning to the sun shining into his eyes, to 10:00 AM on his alarm clock, to a very dry mouth and the worst headache of his life, but more importantly, to Namine naked in his bed and, upon further investigation, a used condom in the trash can under his nightstand.

Axel climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of pajama pants, and stumbled to the bathroom to vomit.


	10. Paralysis

Axel's toothbrush seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and he dragged it slowly across his molars, pausing to swallow down foamy toothpaste and acid bile, lukewarm water and something in his throat that still tasted like Southern Comfort. He stared at himself in the mirror and thought the first half of a million thoughts. They seemed to collide in his mind before any of them could become truly coherent, and he was left with a blank slate and the realization that he looked almost as shitty as he felt.

After a while he noticed he'd run out of toothpaste on his toothbrush, so he added some more, then gently set his toothbrush on the side of the sink and calmly settled onto his knees for round four of violent, painful vomiting. Impartial to the burn in his throat, he flushed something purple and green and resentful away and set about brushing his teeth again. Everything moved slowly around him.

Namine was gone when he finally opened the bathroom door and turned out the light. Her backpack was still on the floor, and her phone lay forgotten on Axel's bed. The bedroom door was left ajar.

Axel found a clean t-shirt in one of Riku's drawers and delicately moved himself from the room into the hallway, then the stairs, one at a time, and past an ungodly bright window into the living room.

Riku was still on the couch, where he'd slept the night before, and Namine was seated beside him in a pair of Axel's sweats and one of his long-sleeved tees. Riku made a vague noise of greeting as he continued to flip through channels, and Namine looked up to make wary eye contact with Axel.

Flashes of the night before had slowly begun to come back to him, and Axel squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to make them go away. He didn't want to know what Namine looked like beneath his baggy clothes, and it bothered him immensely that he did. He opened his eyes, and another flash of her skin appeared to him behind them, and Axel made a small noise of self-disgust before he turned and shuffled into the kitchen.

There was ginger ale in the fridge, and he paused with a hand on the door as Namine appeared in his peripheral vision, leaning against the counter directly to his left.

"Did it hurt?" he asked eventually, voice hoarse from throwing up.

Namine nodded, looking down, and Axel wished he'd never been born. He lowered his head to rest against the fridge in front of him and closed his eyes again.

"Does it still?"

"A little," she said quietly.

Axel winced.

"I didn't bleed," she added, digging her hands deep into her pockets.

"That's… good?"

"Mm."

Axel took a deep breath. "I-"

"Don't," Namine said sharply, and he looked up in mild, hungover confusion.

"Don't apologize," she continued, moving off of the counter to grab a cookie from Axel's mom's cookie jar. "You did what you did, and so did I. There's no point in apologizing. For what, anyway? You got drunk and had sex with your best friend. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal, I would guess, would be that my best friend hadn't ever had sex with anybody before."

Axel immediately regretted the words, watching Namine's façade dissolve. He was suddenly very aware that he was 17 years old, and he wished more than anything to backpedal a few years. They weren't twenty-somethings at the club, going out drinking and sleeping with each other and laughing it all off like a perfect little sitcom, they were high school kids acting like _idiots_, and he suddenly felt very much like a child playing in his father's shoes, trying to put on a tie and a hat and tripping over his feet in the process. He was an imposter, leaning against the fridge in his parents' kitchen, and she was nothing like last night, he thought. But then again, what had she been last night? Had anything really changed? Last night he'd still been an imposter, and she'd been just the same – a fragile girl in a white dress, wearing mommy's makeup and drinking grown-up drinks at the grown-up version of the Homecoming dance. Axel truly disgusted himself sometimes.

"Do you… remember it?" Namine asked.

Axel shook his head, finally opening the fridge and taking out the ginger ale as he felt his stomach turn again. "Not really. I'm sorry for that, if you won't let me apologize for anything else. I'm sorry I can't remember ruining your first time, I'm sorry I got you drunk, I'm sorry _I _got so fucking drunk."

"Jesus, Axel, you act like it's the end of the fucking world. Yeah, it wasn't… how I planned it would be, but worse things have happened. So I got drunk one night and had sex with _you_, I mean, Ax, at least it was you and not some, I dunno, some _creep_!"

"Yes, okay, you got drunk and had sex with your friend Axel last night. Namine, last night I got drunk and had sex with a _girl_," Axel despaired, setting the bottle of ginger ale on the counter with shaking hands.

"Oh!" Namine said, surprised. "Oh, _I'm sorry_, I thought we were worrying about _my_ feelings here. But go ahead, please, have a personal fucking crisis because you put your cock in a female. Please."

Axel took a long sip of the ginger ale, letting it sit in his mouth before he swallowed it. "I'm-"

"_Don't_. Don't even _think_ about apologizing again, it's useless and stupid," Namine cut him off, standing up from the stool she'd been sitting on. "And for the record, I'm pretty sure last night you had sex with a fucking _ghost_. I'm sure you don't remember, but you were pretty fucking out of it, and if you _must_ apologize for something, you could apologize for calling me _Roxas_ when you fucking came."

Namine stalked out of the room, and Axel closed his eyes and took a deep breath in before turning to slam his fist as hard as he could into the kitchen wall.

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"Can you _believe_ it's December already?"

Axel cracked open one eye, shielding it with his hand from the bright lights shining on the stage. Yuffie was sitting beside him, legs stretched out in front of her, ripping off bite-sized pieces of her sandwich and eating them. He made a noncommittal noise and looked past her to the others. They tended to gather on the stage for lunch, but Axel hadn't been feeling particularly hungry. Beside Yuffie was Marluxia, sharing a foot-long sub with Xigbar, then Namine, going over something about a scene with Riku, and Kairi eating pizza with Luxord, who'd stopped by with sustenance. Zexion was sitting at the edge of the stage, one leg hanging off, and laughing with Demyx about something.

For a moment, this struck Axel as strange, but Demyx _had_ mentioned the week before that Zexion had agreed to help him record a few of his songs, and that the two had actually hung out a couple times outside of crew. And Zexion had seemed, well, for lack of a better term, more _normal_ lately. He spoke more, although he was still pretty quiet, but mostly he just didn't look so damn _angry_ all the time. Axel watched as Demyx nodded at Zexion and turned to head up toward the booth.

It had been a couple of weeks since the incident with Namine. Axel watched her talking to Riku. They hadn't really talked about it, not since that morning, but after the first five days of mutual silent treatment, they'd both cracked, and they'd been civil to each other at crew after that. Two days ago, they'd sort of addressed the issue, but mostly in the form of Namine informing him that what had happened hadn't changed anything about her situation with Marly and Kairi, and Axel had agreed that it hadn't changed the way he felt about Roxas, and they'd sort of had an awkward silence until Riku had burst into the shop, yelling about how Sora had misplaced _all_ of the hand saws.

_Roxas_, Axel thought, _was a whole nother story._ Despite his drunken realizations, and the sober ones that had followed, he hadn't found a way to tell Roxas how he was feeling, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. The past two weeks had held a number of friendly encounters between the two, and while he realized he wanted nothing more than to have Roxas back in his arms, he was so intensely thrilled to just have him back as a friend that he didn't want to do anything to jeopardize that. On the other hand, every time he saw the blond, he was immensely tempted to tell him everything and try to win him back, and on occasion, the tension between them had put him on the edge of throwing Roxas against a wall and kissing him into next week.

"Oy," he said, gesturing for Zexion to come over to where he had stretched out.

"What's the deal with you two?" he asked, when Zexion had settled in between him and Yuffie.

"Oh, that?" Zexion replied, nodding toward Demyx in the booth. "I just need him to record the arguing for that scene in the second act. I'd have Kairi do it herself, but every time I've tried to ask her, she just tells me how busy she is."

"Arguing? Isn't it… I mean, it's Kairi and Rikku's characters."

"Yeah, but it's supposed to be sort of far-off sounding, you know? So I just told him to make some vague, girly sounding argument, you know, argue with himself in high-pitched tones about a man, and it'll be playing quiet enough that no one will be able to tell."

Axel snorted. "Does he even know how to hook up the mics to record?"

"Well, one can only hope," Zexion said, shaking his head. "He'll figure it out, I'm sure."

"Huh."

Axel studied Zexion for another moment. "You like him, don't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"He pisses you off, but you like him."

A loud crackle came through the speakers as Demyx turned his mic on upstairs. Axel assumed he knew how to take it off it's God-mic status and take the audio out of the house, but the crackle overpowered his voice.

Zexion narrowed his eyes. "_What_ did you say?"

"I said," Axel said slowly, sitting up and moving his face closer to Zexion's. "He pisses you off, but you _like_ him."

Zexion blinked, meeting Axel's eyes from inches away as the sound of Demyx bustling around the booth broadcasted through the theater. After a moment, he looked away.

"I'm right," Axel said, smirking.

Zexion shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "He doesn't piss me off."

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"My biggest problem," Marluxia said, lowering his voice at Xigbar over his sandwich, "Is _those two_."

Xigbar raised one eyebrow, jerking his head not-so-subtly toward the others a few feet away. "Nam?"

Marly nodded. "And Kairi."

"Yeah," Xigbar mumbled, "I'm pretty sure that's _everyone's_ problem right now. You need to like, do something about that. Seriously."

"I- You don't understand, it's not that _easy_!"

"Not that easy? You have two gorgeous girls chasing after you, and they're about to rip each other's throats out over you. But mostly, they just bitch at anyone and everyone who'll listen, and to be honest, it's annoying the _shit_ out of everyone here."

Marluxia sighed. "Look, that's not the biggest part of the problem."

"Then what is?" Xigbar replied, taking a bite out of his sandwich. "I mean, really, dude."

"I…"

"You…"

"I dunno," Marluxia said, setting his sandwich down. "Never mind."

"Look, all I'm saying is… there are guys around here who would _kill_ to be with a girl like Namine." Xigbar stared pointedly at Marluxia. "So figure that shit out."

Marluxia looked confused, then incredulous. "I-you, I mean you like –"

"Test, test, is this thing recording?"

Everyone on stage looked up as Demyx's voice rang out through the theater.

Zexion sighed in embarrassment for the other boy, then attempted to wave him down. Demyx didn't appear to see them, and since no one was feeling energetic enough to get up, they elected to attempt conversation over him. He was fiddling with the computer anyway, and now it was quiet enough.

Marluxia blinked, turning back to Xigbar. "You have a thing for-"

"Um, ok, let's see… femmy, girl arguing… uh…"

Demyx cleared his throat, then put on a high pitched voice.

"How could you- uh, oh God. Um… Ok, I'm a girl, and I am, uh, I am _really_ pissed, I am- God, how could you even think that-that what you _did_ would be okay?"

Zexion was laughing, and Axel shook his head, trying not to start.

"I mean seriously, um, Lola, I mean, it's-it's just, uh… Ugh, ok, this sucks. Um. Ok, start over. Zex said to… argue about a guy… Uh…. He's… He's no good for you, I mean, all he does is-is _ignore_ you, and- and he doesn't appreciate you for the woman you are! The amazing, beautiful woman! That you… are. He doesn't love you!"

"Can someone go tell him that mic is still hooked into the- "

"I don't care! And how do you know that? What gives you any right to tell me who I can and can't pursue?!"

"Hello?" Namine said, raising her voice. "Zex, can you _please_ go tell him?"

"He's an asshole, Lola! He's callous and unfriendly, and he's always made it clear he thinks you're stupid, he's… he's cold, and he's been so cruel to you, and now he shows the slightest sign of warmth and you're all over him!"

"Zexion- "

"I _told you_, I don't care what you say! _He's got so much baggage, and no matter how- how amazing his eyes are, and how awesome his hair looks, and how great of a smile he has, and how he-_he laughs at jokes that no one else ever gets, and he's smart, he's so damn smart. And he's _gorgeous_, God _damn_ he's gorgeous, and he doesn't, he doesn't even know it, you know? And he's funny, when he actually opens up a little, and he's, ugh, he's _great_ with those kids. He's just, he's everything I could ever ask for, he's fucking _perfect_, and I-I don't think I've ever felt like this for anyone in my _life_, he's-"

Axel's voice could be heard in the background, and Demyx abruptly cut off on the speakers as the redhead could be seen running into the booth.

"Demyx, everyone can hear you, you're using the fucking god mic."

"I-what?"

Then rustling, and the mic was turned off, and Demyx's mortified face could be seen in the window of the booth. Zexion made brief eye contact before the blond wrenched himself around to face away from the window.

All was silent on stage for a moment, and Zexion closed his eyes and laughed a little, and then everyone was talking again.

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Roxas looked over his shoulder as he heard the dressing room door open. He'd been adjusting his shirt – the latest costume had been officially taken out for the afternoon this Saturday, and he wasn't sure if he liked it or not. Demyx was supposed to head in after lunch to help him figure out the best way to situate his body mic on this one, and Roxas was unsure of how it would work very well with tight jeans and a black t-shirt that fit him in a way that made him think of Ricky Martin. He was pretty sure he'd never worn an outfit this tight, and he was hoping Demyx might lend him some advice.

Unfortunately, it wasn't Demyx who walked through the door with his mic, and Roxas's breath hitched in his throat as he stood before Axel in jeans that actually made him look like he had an ass.

"Demyx incapacitated?" he managed to ask, looking down in embarrassment as the redhead approached him with a grin.

"He's hiding in shame, you know, after the whole God mic incident at lunch," Axel replied. "I told him I'd handle this one for him."

"That was… kind of you."

Axel shrugged. "What are friends for?"

"Heh…"

After a moment of silent appreciation for Roxas's outfit, Axel held out the mic to him.

"So," he said, "I'd say get the box in your pocket and try to route the wire up your side. I think the shirt should hold it in place, but it might be better to have it on your back if it won't."

Roxas nodded, blushing a bit as he jammed the box into his front pocket and succeeded in getting himself completely tangled in wire and stretchy shirt.

"Um," he said, unsure of how a creature with only two arms could get this trapped. "Um, I think you might be wrong. And every time I move my leg, the box starts to get pushed out of my pocket."

Axel had wandered to the other side of the room, and he looked up at the sound of Roxas's despair. Putting himself firmly into Friend Mode, he allowed himself to laugh and strode back over to Roxas to get him untangled.

"I'll help you?"

"Sure," Roxas said, and he straightened his clothes out before holding his arms up a bit for Axel to work his magic.

"Just hold still," Axel murmured, and he reached behind Roxas to slip the box into his back pocket. All too aware of their physical proximity, he tried to block every thought from his mind as he gently pushed Roxas's shirt up. His hands brushed across pale skin, and, mic in hand, he hesitated at Roxas's collarbone as the blond held his shirt up. Swallowing hard, he clipped the mic to Roxas's shirt collar, pushed the wire onto the boy's side, and pulled the shirt back down over it, finally exhaling as he stepped back.

_Or not_, Axel thought, as Roxas's hands stopped him from aforementioned stepping back. Roxas had both hands fisted in Axel's shirt, and Axel noted with mild surprise and general happiness that he'd also found a nice spot for his tongue in Axel's mouth, and now his hands were moving, on his cheek, his jaw, the back of his neck, and Axel remembered how to move and he was holding Roxas close, and he was kissing Roxas back, he was _kissing_ Roxas, and then Roxas was pushing him away and he was looking up and Demyx was in the doorway. Slowly sound returned to Axel, and Demyx was sputtering an apology and leaving the room, slamming the door behind him, and he looked at Roxas with hope and indescribable happiness and Roxas said: "I can't do this," and returned to him an expression that was utterly distraught before pushing past him toward the door.

"Whoah, whoah, wait- what?"

Axel stepped in front of Roxas, putting his arms out to stop the boy from leaving the room.

"Rox, what do you mean? I, this is, I mean, what's going _on_?"

"I-I just can't," Roxas muttered, looking down. "I'm sorry, I don't know what got into me."

"Um, okay, so after… everything, you're going to grab me in the dressing room and stick your tongue down my throat and then walk out of here like nothing happened?"

Roxas said nothing, staring furiously past Axel.

"You can't tell me you didn't feel that," Axel said finally, gently putting a hand on Roxas's arm. "I mean, you _can_. You can tell me you kissed me on a whim, and it was nothing, you can tell me you didn't feel the goddamn _paralysis_ I just felt, the fucking _electricity_, but I think we'll both know you're lying."

Roxas's face changed from furious to confused.

"You used to be in love with me, you know."

"I never stopped," Roxas snapped, shaking off Axel's hand and pushing past him again.

"And you think I did?" Axel replied loudly, raising his voice in an attempt to stop the other boy.

Roxas paused, one hand on the doorknob, the other running anxiously through his hair.

"Shit," he said quietly, and again, more loudly, and again, as a frustrated yell as his hand moved from the doorknob to the frame in a fist.

"I tried so hard to get over you," Axel said, leaning against the mirror. "_So _hard. Roxas, every time I kiss someone I think of you. Every time someone gets my clothes off, I fucking _see_ you. And I know it's not you, and that's the weirdest fucking part. I know it's not you, and I don't really know what to make of it. Every damn time. And I know you're gay. I mean, you know that. _I_ know you're gay, but Sora didn't? So I know you're not dating him. And now this? You're gonna kiss me like that and just fucking walk away?"

Roxas was still, his arm against the door, head down.

"But you're not walking away, are you? You can't, because you're still in love with me, and you felt everything I just felt, and you know that walking out that door right now would be the second biggest mistake of your fucking life. The first being, of course, when you fucked me over the first time."

Roxas inhaled sharply, and after another deep breath, he wrenched the door open, stalking out of the dressing room with a terse "I can't do this right now."

Axel was left alone in the empty room, the door shutting loudly behind Roxas, and he sat down eventually on the couch in an attempt to recover from the tornado he was sure had just blown through his heart.

* * *

**Happy New Year, everyone! :) Thank you so much for reading, and please don't hesitate to leave a review and let me know what you're thinking!**


	11. Stars

Demyx brushed the excess sugar off of a Sour Patch Kid and looked up at Axel with a thumbs-up. They had climbed up, up the spiral staircase in the cement hallway, up the ladder in the stage right wing, up the steep staircase and through the little door to the top of the fly system, the grid. The two of them often made the climb when they were either too lazy to do any work or tired of listening to everyone else's drama. Axel ate a yellow Sour Patch Kid and leaned over the railing, looking down to the stage through the web of cables and the iron grid. He could see Kairi down below, talking to Mr. Leonhart, and Namine fixing a doorknob on the set that had developed a habit of falling out whenever anyone closed the door. 50 feet looked further away in person, he thought, and he took a seat on the platform with Demyx.

"So, cast/crew party tomorrow night," Demyx said, searching through the bag for green.

Axel nodded. "Yeah. I guess Sora's parents are out of town, so it's supposed to be pretty crazy. He asked me to bring whatever liquor I can get my hands on."

"Really? Sora did?"

"Yup. I don't think I really have anything to bring, though, you know? The only person I know who _might_ be able to help me is, well, this bartender I know."

"Who do you know who's a bartender?" Demyx asked, making a face.

"Um, her name's Rinoa. She works at the Hot Box, you know, Zexion's place?"

"Huh? Oh, the place you met him? He's still working there?"

Axel nodded, raising his eyebrows. "Ohhh yeah, he's there, like… well, he's there a lot. He told me he'd be there tonight. I guess I could go over there with him and see if Rinoa's willing to help me out for the party…"

After a moment more of thought, he looked up at Demyx. "Wanna go?"

"Me?" Demyx looked shocked. He dropped his Sour Patch Kid back into the bag.

"Well, yeah. You've never seen Zexion do his thing, but you guys are friends now, right?"

"Well, I mean, yeah, I guess we are."

"It'd be fun. Then I don't have to ride the bus out there all alone. Plus, I… the last time I went there wasn't a night I'm proud of. I can't let that be my last Hot Box memory."

Demyx smiled. "Yeah, I'll go," he said, and he took the opportunity to stare down at whoever was in the wing. "So, are you and Roxas…"

"No," Axel said sharply. "We're… look, I don't know. What you saw on Saturday was… Just don't tell anyone what you saw. I mean, I know you wouldn't, but just… don't. I dunno what that was. Roxas and I are just friends."

"That would seem to be the norm around here," Demyx mumbled, standing up to look over the railing. Axel joined him after a moment, and he continued. "Zexion and I, and I mean, it's good, I like being around him, and being friends with him has let me get to know him better. I just, I dunno, I guess I need to figure out how to torch the butterflies in my stomach and just be his friend, or I need to grow a pair and actually make a move."

Axel made to say something, but Demyx held up a hand. "Not done!" he said, grinning. "It's not just Zex and I. You and Roxas, just friends. Riku and Sora, no, don't look at me like that, they hang out _all the time_ now. But just as friends. Luxord continues to lust after Kairi, every time he comes by here he makes it more and more painfully obvious, and I've heard rumors that Xigbar is biding his time on Namine, which of course ties into the whole Marluxia debacle."

"Well, that's one way to put it- "

"Marly and Namine? Just friends. Marly and Kairi? Just friends. And no one seems to have noticed the possibily of Marly and that other girl, you know, Leonhart's sister."

Axel choked on his Sour Patch Kid. "_Yuffie_? Marly and Yuffie? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Demyx shook his head. "I wish. On Saturday, when you were too busy grumping around after your little Roxas interlude, you missed an important episode."

"And what might that have been, Gossip Girl?"

"I resent that nickname," Demyx said pointedly. "And what you missed was Marluxia running completely out of blush."

Axel snorted. "Yeah, okay, have you _seen_ the makeup room? I don't think it's possible to run completely out of blush in there. And who cares, it's just a rehearsal!"

"Leonhart cares, because it was a rehearsal in full makeup, and he didn't run out of _all_ of the blush, just the color that he needed. In any case, he ran out, and who do you think was there to save him?"

"Um, not Yuffie?"

"Wrong," Demyx said, chewing on another Sour Patch Kid. "Yuffie it was. In case you've forgotten, she works in a department store selling perfume. She has _connections_ with the makeup people."

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack," Demyx said sagely, nodding. "She was able to supply him with what he needed, and when she handed it to him, I almost wondered if she'd used it herself."

Axel blinked. "What?"

"You know, because she was so red. She was blushing. It was blush. Never mind."

"Uh, okay, freak show. So Yuffie blushed when she gave Marly some makeup. Not gonna lie, but if I were into chicks, and it were between Kairi, Namine, and Yuffie, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pick the annoying one who has nothing to do with anything."

"Once again, I resent that, as people often refer to me as the annoying one who has nothing to do with anything. And if you would pay attention to anything other than your own boy problems, you might have noticed that they actually talk to each other quite a lot, and Marly tends to look like whatever a cross between a puppy and a jellyfish would be when she giggles at him."

Axel made a disgusted noise, reaching into the bag for something to chew on. "Whatever. Hot Box tonight?"

"You're on," Demyx said, but before he could say anything else, their conversation was interrupted by a high-pitched screech from the stage. Peering through the grid, they could see tiny versions of Namine and Kairi duking it out on the stage left platform. Dropping the Sour Patch Kids, Demyx and Axel looked at each other for a moment before dashing back into the stairwell to get in on the action.

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"Alright, alright, everybody, _both of you_, STOP."

A small crowd had gathered around the two fuming girls, and Mr. Leonhart now stood between the two, physically holding them off of each other.

"She called me a _whore_!" Kairi shrieked, attempting to push past Leonhart and failing miserably.

"Oh, _okay_, make _me_ the bad guy, after you called me a fucking ugly wannabe!"

"I would never say something like that!"  
"Oh, I think you _would_, since you _did_!"

"Girls!"

Mr. Leonhart looked extremely displeased. Having commanded silence once again, he took a deep breath before he spoke.

"I don't know what your issue is, but it has no place in my rehearsal. Both of you, dressing room, now. You can be on stage when you've figured it out amongst yourselves."

A high-pitched noise of frustration seemed to come without warrant from Kairi's throat, and, ripping her arm from Mr. Leonhart's grasp, she stomped into the wing to go to the dressing room.

"I am _not_ talking to her," Namine growled, and she stalked in the opposite direction, running directly into Axel, who herded her into the shop. All eyes now turned to Marluxia, who looked terrified and shrank back towards the green room, and, sighing heavily, Riku stepped forward as Stage Manager to, as he put it in his head, deal with this fucking bullshit.

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"I can't," Marly cried, turning away from Riku in the otherwise empty green room.

"You have to."

"I can't!"

"Marly, sit the _fuck_ down," Riku said finally, narrowing his eyes. When the other boy had followed his directions, he continued, taking the seat beside him and leaning very close so as to be very clear. "I'm not going to say this again. You need. To pick. A girl. And if you're not going to pick between Namine and Kairi, then you need to tell both of them _no_. You are _ruining_ my musical with your _fucking_ indecision."

"I can't choose between Namine and Kairi."

"Oh, you can, and you will."

"Will you let me fucking finish?"

Surprised, Riku sat back a little.

"I can't choose between Namine and Kairi, because the girl that I want… is Yuffie."

Riku blinked. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

Marluxia looked as though a large weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "Ugh, I've been trying to tell someone, _anyone_, for like, a week."

"Marly, you can't like Yuffie. No one likes Yuffie. I mean, we don't dislike her, per se, but she's just- she's, I mean, _what_?!"

"What are you talking about? Everyone likes Yuffie," Marluxia said, narrowing his eyes. "I like her. A lot. Look, this isn't even _about_ her. Namine and Kairi are great girls, but she's… I'm crazy about her. She's older than us, she's gorgeous, she's hilarious. She's cute. Yeah, she can be goofy, but she's more _mature_ than these girls our age."

"I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that Yuffie is more mature than Namine?"

"Yes! I am. Seriously, Namine hasn't even, I mean, she's… Namine's… a virgin."

"So _what_?" Riku fumed, pushing his chair back a little. "Maybe that means she's _more_ mature than all the rest of them! Fuck, Marly, I don't fucking know. And honestly, I really don't fucking care who you want to date. But you need to end this. Now. If you aren't interested in Kairi or Namine, you need to tell them that, both of them, and you need to tell them right now."

"They'll _kill_ me!"

"Marly, they used to be best friends, do you understand that? Do you see what you've _done_?"

Marluxia was silent for a moment, and Riku stared at him, and then two doors burst open at once.

Riku put his head in his hands, wondering if it was ever possible for people to enter the green room without slamming doors open and closed, and if anyone ever just came in quietly.

Kairi stood in the doorway of the girls' dressing room, hands on her hips and what appeared to be the fire of Hell in her eyes. Across from her, Namine took a confrontational stance near the door from the school hallway, pushing her fingers through her hair as she stared the other girl down. After a moment, all eyes turned to Marly, who looked considerably afraid.

"Tell them," Riku hissed, kicking him under the table.

"I _can't_!"

"Just _do it_ already!"

Both girls had advanced upon the table, and they stood side by side across from Marly and Riku.

"I think it's time for this to end," Kairi said quietly, and Marly sighed and stood up.

"Look," he said. "I didn't want it to happen this way, but the fact is, the way both of you have been acting is profoundly unattractive. You're both great girls, but there's someone else, and… um… I'm sorry?"

"What?" Kairi spat.

"Someone _else_?" Namine repeated, eyebrows raised.

"Yuffie," Marluxia sighed, and with that, he put his hands up to waive any explanations and backed slowly out of the room.

Riku leaned back in his chair to watch the two girls' expressions change. He likened it to the Northern Lights, or fireworks, or something else fun to watch.

"He likes… Yuffie?" Kairi said eventually, looking at Namine in disbelief.

"Wouldn't you think," Namine replied, "That he would have said something, I dunno, a little bit earlier?"

"What a fucking douche," Kairi agreed. "Fuck."

"I mean _seriously_!"

"Ugh!"

Kairi stared at the seat where Marluxia had previously been sitting. "I could really use a good cup of fucking Earl Grey tea right now," she muttered.

"And two orders of mozzarella sticks from Papa Vinnie's," Namine said slowly.

"And a new coat of nail polish," Kairi added, looking up.

"You know what?" Namine said. "Fuck him. Let's go."

Riku watched incredulously as the two feuding girls smiled at each other and together, left the room.

Alone in the green room, Riku found comfort in the idea that there might be hope for his musical after all.

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"Johnny, _please_!"

Demyx looked down as the large man in front of the club's door shook his head at Axel once again.

"Look man, you get in here 'cause you been comin' here so long, but I can't have you bringin' underage kids with you! Gonna lose my damn job out here!"

"Johnny, _I'm_ an underage kid, and that's never been a problem."

"Yeah, but you got that cute lil' punk look wi' the spiky red hair and whatnot, guys dig that, you always been a lil' piece."

"_Excuse me_?"

"Then someone musta taught you how to dress, 'cause _damn_, boy, you got style. I like the new kicks, by the way."

Axel glanced down at his shoes. "They're, I- thanks, I- did you seriously just call me a punk? When have I _ever _dressed like a-"

"Never said you _dressed_ like one, you just, it's the hair, baby."

"Demyx has hair too!" Axel cried, gesturing at the boy beside him. "He's more of a piece than I am!"

"Yeah, he's cute, but I can't make no more exceptions, lil' Red. You the last one, ya know I'm saying?"

Axel sighed, cussing himself out internally for being stupid enough to think he'd get another kid in twice. He hadn't wanted to bring this up in front of Demyx, hadn't wanted anyone to even know anything about that night.

"Johhny," he said, through gritted teeth. "What about that night a few weeks ago, when I brought my _other_ friend?"

"Aw, that cute lil' blond chick? Honey, I knew she was wit'choo, but the girl had an ID, so I let it go."

"She had an ID?"

"Didn't look nothin' like her, but she had an ID."

Blinking, Axel stepped through the door, reached into his pocket and pulled out his fake ID.

"Johnny," he said. "Blink."

Johnny grinned, pointedly closing his eyes and rubbing them. "Man, I think I got sum'n in muh left eye, here. I just, I dunno what coulda got in there, I- why hello there, blondie! ID?"

Showing Axel's drugstore passport photo and the name Charles Martini III, age 29, Demyx joined Axel inside.

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"He's really good!" Demyx shouted, and Axel grinned and nodded under the flashing lights. Demyx had been immediately dazzled by the club, by Zexion up top, by the music. They'd been dancing for a good hour or so, and Zexion would be finishing up at the end of this song.

Axel had managed to procure a fifth of cherry vodka from Rinoa, and he'd hidden it in the jacket he'd left there the last time he'd been at the club. He figured after Zexion came down, he'd head home, and if Demyx wanted to stay, he could. If Axel were ever to have a matchmaker-ly moment, this would be it, and as the new DJ came on, Axel pulled Demyx off the dance floor to meet up with Zexion by the bar.

"Ax, hey, I- Demyx! Wow, didn't expect to see you here," Zexion said, taking his usual seat at the end.

"Axel told me you work here, and I wanted to see what you do," he said, shrugging. "Wanna dance?"

Zexion raised his eyebrows. "Are you serious?"

"Zexion's quite a dancer," Axel said slyly, grinning as he settled his jacket on his shoulders. "I'll see you guys at the party, alright?"

"Later."

"Night, Axel!"

Zexion sighed, turning back to Demyx after waving goodbye to Axel. He had to admit the blond looked good – as awkward as he managed to be socially, he had a good grasp on popular fashion, and as much as Zexion loved to hate the rich-kid chic look, no one could pull off pink and blue basketball shoes like Demyx, expensive jeans and a soft, fitted black t-shirt with vertical rainbow stripes.

_Maybe his parents are in the mafia or something. Drug cartel, that sort of thing, _he thought. _Or maybe they're just doctors._

"Sure I can't get you to dance?" Demyx asked, and Zexion shook his head, smiling.

"Go ahead," he said. "I'll wait for you."

After a moment of watching the blond on the dance floor, Zexion was startled back to the bar by a loud pop next to his face. Rinoa was grinning at him from the other side of the bar, and a bottle of expensive champagne was now fizzing and bubbling in a glass in front of him. Rinoa poured herself a glass too, then held it up to toast.

"To what?" Zexion asked, amused by her spontaneity.

"We're celebrating," she explained, "Because you finally have a crush on someone who'll be good for you."

"Mmm…" Zexion dropped his head, then looked up, fingering the stem of his champagne glass. "Yeah, I guess I do. He's ridiculous, and I want him."

"He's sweet," Rinoa replied. "He was over here with Axel earlier. Anyway, cheers, right? To cute blondes."

"To cute blondes," Zexion agreed, laughing. Taking a sip of his champagne, he turned his head to find Demyx in the crowd, his body swaying and rocking to the beat.

_Feeling all right boy, I feel just fine. Might even take it all the way with you._

Zexion downed his champagne and made his way to Demyx on the floor.

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"It's crazy," Demyx said, leaning over the guard rail on the bridge. "Beautiful."

Moments like this reminded Demyx why he loved the city. Any city, really – how many had he lived in now? Six? Seven? He could hardly keep track. But no matter how you rolled the dice, Demyx was a city boy. When he was younger, they'd lived in expensive lofts or multi-level apartments in the heart of the cities they found. He'd spent his sophomore year of high school in a modern studio in LA, in private school, while his parents relocated to where they were now. The house looked normal enough from the outside, but they'd spent the year renovating the hell out of the inside, and Demyx sometimes resented the dark, hardwood floors and the sunken living room. He loved the house, of course, and he loved that his parents were finally settling on a home they planned to stay in, but every time he went downtown he felt a pang of nostalgia for the year before, looking out the window on the 22nd floor and watching the cars move below him, the signs flashing and the infinite lights in every direction. Despite the fact that his house now technically held a city address, he felt downright suburban trudging home after school, and he missed being right in the middle of everything.

The club had reminded him of LA, of the friends he'd made there at private school who'd gotten him drunk and taken him dancing with them, stumbling through the streets at 3 AM and waving, completely wasted, at the night security as they dragged each other into his elevator. Demyx's place had always been the place to crash at, a safe place to stay, a place to party.

After falling in with that crowd, he'd begun to neglect his music, and the day he finally realized he needed to slow the hell down was not the day he woke up with three naked girls in his bed, or even the day he spent desperately cleaning his trashed apartment when his parents called to say they were flying in at noon. It wasn't the night he first slept with a guy, stoned out of his mind, or the night he locked himself out and slept against his front door. It was the Sunday that Demyx woke up on the front steps of his building, in a rumpled version of the school uniform he'd gone to school in on Friday (tie loosened to the point of nearly falling off, sleeves rolled up, belt missing and pants unbuttoned), and realized he could not remember anything past the beginning of the party Friday evening. The loss of those 36 or so hours hit Demyx harder than the loss of his virginity, the loss of his music, his ability to actually hold any kind of intelligent conversation, the loss of his previously fantastic GPA, pretty much anything. After that day, he'd essentially cut off all of his partying, and he'd focused intently on his schoolwork and his music for the remaining few months of the school year. He'd lapsed into a daily routine for most of the summer after that: wake up before the sun, run 3 miles in the sunrise, then return to the studio and shower. Take the time to cook something for breakfast, and meticulously read the newspaper while eating it. By the time he'd finish his leisurely morning, it would be close to noon, and he'd spend the rest of the day with his guitar, or however he pleased. Most of his friends from that school had abandoned him when he'd abandoned their lifestyle, and when his parents announced it was time for him to move up North with them in August, he'd realized that the shy disposition he'd had before his partying days had returned full force. Demyx had been convinced he'd never make any friends here.

He hadn't noticed Zexion dancing behind him until he'd felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Let's go home," Zexion had said, and Demyx had smelled champagne on his breath and wondered if Zexion was drunk.

Now, standing on the bridge waiting for the bus, he was sure that Zexion wasn't drunk. Nostalgia and memory had flooded his brain, and as he watched the vapor of his breath float away in the wind, he let the city wrap its arms around him.

"What are you thinking?" Zexion asked, and Demyx looked up. He had forgotten for a moment that he was shy, but eye contact with Zexion had this habit of scaring the shit out of him.

_Fuck, what am I afraid of? Why the hell does everyone think I'm awkward? Why _am_ I awkward? I fucked three girls at once when I was 16 years old, God dammit. People cheered for me when I danced at parties, and my parents called me to ask how the hell I had managed to have 16,000 incoming text messages in a month. So what if I was stoned all the time? Drunk off my ass… Shit. I don't need to be fucking drunk to make eye contact with an attractive guy. I don't need to be _drunk_ to be… not shy. I don't need to be-_

"Apparently a lot," Zexion murmured, studying Demyx's furrowed brow.

Demyx blinked, then shook his head. "Nah. Not really. I just love the city."

"It's kind of remarkable tonight," Zexion replied, leaning back against the rail. "And it's clear, you can see the stars."

"You can see them all around," Demyx said, gesturing to the river. "You can see them above, you can see the lights of the city all around us, like… endless stars. And the hills further out, people's lights are on on the hills. You can hardly tell where the houses stop and the stars begin. And then the river, the reflections are… I dunno, it's just… There's really nothing like it."

"Makes you wanna write a song," he added, after a moment.

Zexion let out a quiet laugh, still watching him.

"Dear Maria," Demyx said slowly. "Dear Maria, I'm writing to you from a city of stars."

"Hmmph!"

Demyx looked up. Zexion's face had moved into a smirk, and when Demyx met his eyes, he looked straight ahead instead.

"What?" he asked, and Zexion looked down for a moment.

"Who's Maria?"

Demyx was silent. He'd created Maria that summer. He wrote many of his songs to her, not so much anyone or thing specific as a name to represent a lover, a city, an enemy, a feeling. Zexion hadn't asked before, when they'd been recording. Demyx didn't mention her in most of his songs, not really, but if he needed a name, he'd always use Maria. That summer, he'd written short stories as well. Poems, and letters, and endless stories. Whenever he needed a name, he would use Maria until he found something better. She'd become the default, and his friends had all assumed, when they heard her name in his songs, that she'd been an old girlfriend or something. Maria was nobody, and effectively represented anybody.

"Let me rephrase," Zexion said, studying his fingernails. "Why are all of your songs about her?"

Demyx tried to remind himself of the phone bills, of the popularity, of his ability to conquer shyness. "They're, um, they're love songs, a lot of them," he managed to choke out. Zexion's eyes tended to render him speechless, and despite his best efforts, he realized he needed to remember to breathe as Zexion gave up on his fingernails and turned to face Demyx completely.

"So you're in love with her?" Zexion asked, narrowing his eyes. "I mean, I guess that makes sense. In love with Maria, write to and/or about Maria."

Demyx swallowed.

"I guess I'd just been hoping maybe you'd write one for me," Zexion said softly, and Demyx slowly raised his eyes as the words sunk in.

They maintained a steady, understanding eye contact for a moment before Demyx found enough sound in his throat to reply.

"Dear Z," he said hoarsely. "I'm writing to you… from a city. Of stars."

The last word hung in the air between them, and they both moved excruciatingly slowly toward each other until their frozen, shaky lips met and it wasn't until Demyx's bus pulled up loudly beside them that Demyx opened his eyes and realized it had begun to snow, and he laughed a little as he waved goodbye to Zexion through the window of the bus. The snow looked like stars falling down around Zexion under the streetlight and Demyx's grin finally began to relax as he locked his front door behind him and shook the snow off his shoes in the front hallway.

He hadn't written anything but music since the summer before, but tonight he sat on his bed with his notebook and watched the snow fall and wrote one short paragraph.

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_Dear Z,_

_I was writing to you earlier from a city of stars; of light. I wish more than anything that we could both be there now to see it: the stars up high and the stars all around and the stars shining back up off the surface of the river. Although now that I think about it, I guess that's a lie. My real wish, my selfish wish, is for us both to be there so I could see the stars reflected in your eyes, dancing there; your face illuminated by John's apartment or-or Sally's TV, still on, or Jane's office, where she's still awake, working all night on that big project, hoping for that big promotion. If we were there though, we could pretend – together – that they all really were stars, all the offices and apartments and grocery stores and televisions. We'd watch the stars float past like snow, like lightning bugs, and we'd walk, hand in hand back to your house. By the time we got there we'd have tiny stars stuck in our eyelashes and our hair, and we'd step inside and brush all the little stars off of each other, and we could fall asleep together, the bed soft and warm, so warm – but not too warm – with all the stars still glittering outside. _


	12. I Can't Lie, I Don't Know

**AN:** Thank you all for reading! :) Embarrassingly enough, credit to both Third Eye Blind and John Mayer for lyric use in this one.

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_Your eyes look at me for what to do. I can't lie, I-I-I don't know._

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Roxas scanned the room before taking the empty seat beside Axel on one of the two couches in Sora's basement. He'd arrived late-ish for the party – he'd had to finish an English paper before he'd let himself leave the house. It was already going to be turned in late, and he knew he wouldn't get around to working on it later in the weekend if he left it undone. By the time he'd typed the last period and given it a quick once-over for proofreading purposes, it was already 11:30, and he'd hurried to freshen up before dashing out to the car.

He'd parked across the street and entered the house to find it full of vaguely familiar crew members and kids he didn't really know all too well. Knowing Sora, however, Roxas naturally gravitated to the basement, where he found his friend sprawled on the larger couch with Riku, Demyx, and Zexion, Pabst in hand. Axel had taken the closest seat on the smaller couch, and Roxas noted a group of five playing cards on the other side of the dimly-lit room: Marluxia, Kairi, Namine, Luxord, and Xigbar.

"Roxas!" Sora cried, grinning widely as he finally noticed his friend's presence. He'd previously been deeply engrossed in what appeared to be an action movie on the television in front of them.

"Hey," Roxas replied, unable to keep from laughing at Sora's semi-drunk expression. "Sorry I'm late. I had to finish the Whitman paper."

Sora blinked a few times, taking another long gulp of beer. "I thought that was due on Wednesday," he said eventually. "Like, the Wednesday that just happened. I mean, not _just_ happened, but happened a few, 3, or… 2. Or maybe it is 3, I mean, it already was."

Roxas raised his eyebrows, glancing sideways at Axel. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, it's late."

Axel opened his mouth to say something to Roxas, but before he could speak, Sora had begun again.

"Dude!" he proclaimed loudly, finishing off the can and slamming it onto the coffee table. "You," (and here he pointed at Roxas's face, nearly toppling over if Riku hadn't reached out an arm to steady him) "You, my friend, are _fucked_, because Armstrong said at the beginning of the year that she-" (and here he made a noise between a hiccup and a burp) "-she doesn't _accept_ late papers. _But_, but- don't- no, no I'm not _done_," (and here he cleared his throat, grinning again) "But now is not the time for such… trifles! Now is the time for you to crack open a cold one, because in fact, I am having… a party."

With that, he stumbled over to the refrigerator beside the TV and pulled out two bottles of Corona – one for Roxas, and one for himself.

"Without any further ado," he continued, suddenly sounding distinctly more sober, "I'm gonna go do a quick round and make sure nothing's broken upstairs."

Roxas sighed and nodded a thank you to Axel, who had opened the bottle for him while he'd been watching Sora head upstairs.

"So I guess people are drunk, then," he said, taking a slow sip.

"Well, most of the drunk ones are upstairs dancing, minus the Ring of Fire group and these two," Riku said, jerking his head first toward the group playing cards and then toward Demyx and Zexion, both of whom seemed totally into the movie and totally out of everything else. Not-so-hidden between the two of them, Demyx had taken Zexion's hand, and Roxas noted the slow pattern he seemed to be tracing with his thumb over the other boy's skin.

"It's not so bad," Axel said, reaching into a bowl Roxas hadn't noticed on the end table. His hand returned a moment later full of popcorn, and Roxas realized awkwardly that he'd sat, without thinking, extremely close to the other boy.

"I think I may be the only sober one tonight," Riku noted, stretching his arms and resettling on the couch. "I told Sora I'd keep an eye out on the house, you know, regulate. But mostly I've been hanging out down here. Feel free to, I don't know, _not_ get drunk with me. It's actually considerably more fun once everyone starts acting like idiots later."

"Uh, excuse me," Axel cut in, "I'm not drunk, am I?"

Riku snorted. "You will be. Oh, don't even give me that look, just give it an hour and you'll be well on your way."

Roxas laughed, and when Axel turned to him indignantly, he shrugged. "What? He's probably right."

"Oh, whatever, like you're one to talk!"

"Oh right, after two sips, I'm drunk?"

"Actually, you're right," Axel said, smirking. "I remember now, you don't tend to swallow a whole lot at once."

Riku choked on his popcorn and kicked his brother, shooting him a disgusted look, and before Roxas could come up with any kind of retort, Sora had burst back into the circle, slumping down on the couch in his old spot.

"Everything looks ok," he said breathlessly, settling in between Riku and Demyx. "But scoot over, guys, the others wanna come over here."

"What? I- there's no-"

In a matter of seconds, Roxas found himself squished between Axel and Luxord, Kairi perched on the latter's lap. Marluxia had squeezed between Sora and Demyx, and Xigbar and Namine had both cleared off the coffee table enough to sit on it.

Axel sighed, wondering how it was that circles like this always tended to crop up around him, and he was considerably less than surprised when Luxord pulled a small plastic bag from his pocket.

"You guys can smoke with us if you want," Luxord drawled, half drunk and exceedingly British.

"I'm ok, thanks."

Luxord shrugged. "To each his own," he said, and Kairi inexplicably started to laugh, which naturally caused Namine to laugh too, and then Sora and Demyx, and by the time they'd all established that they were laughing but none of them knew why, Luxord had taken a long hit and passed the pipe to Kairi.

Roxas stared angrily at his knees, still fuming at what Axel had said. He watched, unimpressed, as Kairi broke into a coughing fit, and Xigbar instructed Namine on how to use a pipe.

"You know," he murmured, looking down at his knees again, "I wish you wouldn't say things like that."

Axel hesitated, then cleared his throat and replied dryly. "Um. I'm sorry. It was just a joke. I didn't mean anything by it."

"But it's not," Roxas said quickly. "Because it was something you used to… make fun of me about. So it's not just a regular joke."

Axel blinked. "Does that matter?"

"Yes, of course it matters!"  
"Jesus, Roxas, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings!"

"Shhh!"

Roxas quieted Axel as Riku glanced over at them; Axel's tone had become loud enough to attract his attention. Axel took a deep breath, then spoke again, more quietly. "Look, don't start a conversation like this if you don't want to have it."

Roxas was silent.

"But then again," Axel muttered, "You seem to have a habit of starting things you don't want to finish lately."

"Really, Axel? Really? Can we just… not go there?"

Axel sighed, watching Zexion take a deep hit and blow it back out, coughing a bit as he handed the pipe to Demyx.

"No," he said slowly, "I think we need to go there."

"Right now?"

"Yeah," Axel said, this time with more conviction. "Yeah, we need to have this conversation. Any conversation. Seriously."

Roxas shook his head, taking another sip of his beer. "Not now."

"Then when, Rox?"

Axel turned to face him, maintaining eye contact until Roxas looked away. He studied the other boy's face, trying to find some kind of sign, and then-

"Axel!"

Axel looked up, surprised, to find Sora holding the pipe toward him.

"Riku's not smoking," Sora said, choking a little on his words.

"Oh!" Axel shook his head. "No thanks. I'm not either."

Sora turned to Roxas, who met Axel's eyes for another moment before giving him a mutinous look and reaching for the pipe. While Sora fumbled for the lighter, Axel narrowed his eyes at Roxas.

"So that's how it's gonna be?"

When Roxas said nothing, he continued in a low voice. "Rox, we need to talk, and we need to do it now, and we need to do it sober. Come on," he finished, and he stood up from the couch, waiting for Roxas to do the same.

After another moment, Roxas stood up angrily, handing the pipe to Luxord and pushing past Axel toward the stairs.

Luxord shrugged, taking the lighter from Sora, and the circle scooted in, closing the gap.

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Axel slowly closed the bathroom door. He could feel Roxas's eyes on his back and the music from downstairs vibrated the floor beneath them, but upstairs it was a little bit quieter, and this seemed to be the only room where they could be alone. He stood still, facing the door for a moment before taking a deep breath and turning to face Roxas. For a few seconds they simply stood still, a few feet away from each other, taking each other in, and then Axel stepped forward to put a hand on Roxas's shoulder and Roxas was kissing him again.

The initial shock had a way of totally paralyzing Axel, he noted, and he lost himself in the kiss, running his hands up Roxas's sides and pulling him closer. The blond felt stiff, somehow – stressed, and Axel slowly collected himself as he felt Roxas's tongue in his mouth once again.

"No," he finally said, pulling away. "No, Rox- I… what are you _doing_?"

"Kissing you," Roxas muttered, trying once more to pull the other boy's face down to his.

Axel resisted, holding Roxas back with one arm and stepping away. "But I thought you only wanted to be friends."

Roxas said nothing, fidgeting with the edges of his pockets.

"So that would make this just another momentary lapse of judgment, I presume?"

"Sure," Roxas mumbled, "Whatever."

Stepping forward, he pressed Axel to the wall with another kiss, only to find himself held off once again.

"No, no, _listen_ to me, Roxas. I'm not doing this, okay?"

"Why not?" Roxas demanded. "You want to. I know you do!"

"Damn straight I want to," Axel replied. "Jesus, Rox, of course I fucking want to, but I don't want to hide it, I don't want to sneak around having some big secret relationship, I don't want to lose my best friend for another two years because someone accidentally walks into a room when I'm kissing you, okay? That's not- that's not worth it. To me, it's not worth it, alright? So either- either you can just get the hell over it and be my boyfriend, you know, out there," he said furiously, gesturing to the door, "In the basement, in the park, at school, wherever the _fuck_! Or we can just be friends."

Roxas hesitated, shaking his head, then leaned back against the counter.

"The team would never understand."

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Riku shifted over as far as he could towards the armrest of the couch. The others had finished smoking and gone back to their cards, and Sora had shakily stumbled up the stairs to make another round of the main floor, leaving Riku alone on the couch with Demyx and Zexion.

In the approximately four minutes that had passed since then, he'd become increasingly aware of the fact that the basement was very dimly lit, now smoky, and Demyx and Zexion were both just intoxicated enough to forget he was there.

At this point, Demyx had climbed completely onto Zexion's lap, and when Riku noticed out of the corner of his eye that Zexion's jeans were being unbuttoned, he decided to bolt. Standing quickly, he headed for the stairs, turning the corner just in time to run head-on into a red-eyed Sora.

"Riku! Riku, I was _looking_ for you," Sora slurred, putting out both hands to get his balance.

"You're… very drunk," Riku observed, and Sora laughed for a moment before making a sound like he was on the verge of throwing up.

"I… glurp…"

Riku's eyes widened as Sora's expression changed drastically into one of the nearly-ill. "Okay, come on, down the stairs," he said hastily, hurrying Sora down the stairs and into the basement bathroom just in time for the brunet to vomit violently into the sink.

Riku was immediately torn between a compulsion to help Sora and a deep dislike for any situation involving vomit. Sora gagged again, and after spitting what seemed to Riku to be roughly a gallon of green bile into the sink, he looked up. A drop of stringy vomit fell from his lip to his shirt, and Riku closed his eyes, hoping this was just a terrible, disgusting dream.

"Dear god," he muttered, directing Sora to the toilet and turning on the water to wash the sink out. "Just-just- no, don't come back over here, stay there. Stay by the toilet. There might be more."

"Riku, I have to tell you- I have to-hnnnnggh…"

Riku abstained from watching as Sora choked and gagged on the floor beside him, instead trying to focus on getting the sink clean. Then he heard the toilet flush, and he turned to look down at a crumpled, very wasted Sora on the floor, with considerably more vomit on his shirt.

Kneeling beside his friend, he sighed. "Come on, you've got to get a new shirt. This is… yeah…"

"Riku, I have to tell you something."

"And what can you possibly have to tell me right now, Captain Chunks?"

"Riku, I'm- I'm very much… in like… with you, I mean, I mean, I'm- I-"

"No, oh God no – no, no, no," Riku cut him off, vehemently denying what Sora seemed to be trying to say. "This is… _not_ happening. You just think you like me because- because you're completely trashed, I-"

"No, _listen_, Riku, I like you, I like you a-a lot, I like you… more than I should-"

Sora cut off again to puke some more, but he seemed to have got everything out, and simply gagged over the toilet to no effect.

"Come on," Riku said quietly, after a minute or so of silence. "You've got to get a clean shirt."

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_Your eyes look at me for what to do. I can't lie, I-I-I don't know._

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"_Fuck _the team."

"No, fuck you, okay?" Roxas burst out, stepping away from the counter. "Fuck you, Axel. You have no fucked idea what this is like."

"I know exactly what it's like."

"No!" Roxas said sharply. "No, soccer never meant anything to you, it was a fun sport to play and something to do. Soccer is my goddamn life, Axel, it's something I've spent my entire life building – _one _solid thing in my life that I know how to do, that I'm actually good at, that I love doing. It's what I do. The team is like my fucking family, Axel! Without them, I have nothing!"

Dropping his head, he sat down on the side of the bathtub.

"I know," Axel said softly, sitting down beside him.

"You don't know," Roxas sneered. "You don't _know_. You quit the fucking team."

"I quit the team because you broke my fucking heart, Roxas. I quit the team because you called me a faggot in front of all of them to make yourself look better. I quit the team because I couldn't even fucking look at you, I was so pissed off at you, it hurt to be in the same fucking room as you, it hurt to hear your voice, it hurt to fucking think about you! Of course I quit the fucking team!"  
Axel closed his eyes, listening to the bass thumping up through the floor.

"Rox," he said, almost inaudibly. "Rox, if the team can't accept you for who you actually are, what kind of family are they?"

After another silence, he continued. "I mean… Rox, just forget the team. This isn't even about the team. It's about you, and what _you_ want. Not the team, not the coach, not your parents – what do _you_ want?"

Roxas put his head in his hands, seemingly trying to think, then stood up, frustrated.

"You can't- you can't do that," he said exasperatedly. "You just can't."

Leaning on the counter again, he looked at the sink, then at his reflection in the mirror, then shook his head. "Those things _are_ me. Without soccer I'm nothing, Axel. I'm not _good_ at anything else, okay? Everyone…. Everyone I fucking know has something, _something_ that they're just naturally good at. Everyone except me. I'm completely fucking average. I'm not organized, I'm not smart, I'm not particularly funny or good looking, I'm a mediocre kid with mediocre grades, but _fuck_, I'm a pretty good soccer player. And not because I have some natural fucking talent, but because I've spent the past twelve years of my life beating the mediocrity out of that one, one part of my life. It's as close as I'm ever going to come to standing out, to having something I can actually be proud of myself for, to having a group of friends who can give me a nod as we're coming off the field and tell me I did good, and actually have some vague level of respect for me."

Axel looked up, confused. "Rox, what are you- what are you talking about? I mean, okay, just- just back up for a second. Where are we right now?"

"… Sora's bathroom?"

"Right, Sora's bathroom, in Sora's house, at the cast party for the musical that you are the _lead_ in. Rox, Leonhart is a fucking hardass, okay? He could have cast any of the guys who tried out, half of which have been taking singing lessons since they were like, 8, and have been in plays before, but he didn't. He picked you. You've never been in a play, you've never been trained to sing, and you're fucking amazing! And you know it, so don't give me this 'I'm not good at anything' shit. You have an amazing fucking voice, you're an amazing actor, and on top of that, who ever told you you weren't funny or good looking? You're a fucking blond bombshell, and if you weren't funny, I wouldn't laugh at your jokes so damn much."

Roxas laughed a little, looking down as Axel stood up.

"And if those guys on the team are all you've got, then what am I? What about Sora? What about everyone downstairs? I mean, Rox, when you're out there singing… it feels good, doesn't it?"

Roxas was still for a moment before nodding silently.

"And I mean, if the soccer guys knew about us, and they didn't like it, it's not like there's nowhere else you can play soccer. If you take the risk, for all you know, things could be fine with the team, you know? And if they don't like it, then… you'll still have us. You'll still have soccer, you can play for a local team or something. You'll still have me," Axel continued, nudging Roxas's arm, "You'd still have this," he said, tipping Roxas's face up with one finger and leaning to down to kiss him softly.

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Riku leaned against Sora's dresser, waiting for the brunet to remember how to take off his shirt. Sora looked bewildered, swaying as he tried to get himself out of the cast t-shirt he was wearing.

The logical part of Riku's brain told him not to help Sora – that the confusion he was feeling would be put to an end if he found himself in Sora's bedroom, taking off his clothes for him, but on the other hand, he felt deeply compelled to provide assistance, and knew he hadn't herded the other boy up to his room for his _own_ benefit… or had he?

Riku closed his eyes, unsure of himself and cursing the entire situation. Pointedly pushing all of his thoughts to the back of his mind, he opened his eyes and beckoned Sora over, gently helping him remove his shirt and pulling the trash can over just in time for another surprise round of puke. Pulling a soft, gray tee from one of the dresser drawers, he gave in completely and knelt on the floor beside the topless boy, and idly patted his back, attempting to give some form on encouragement.

"You really can't hold your liquor, can you?"

Sora shook his head, gasping in air and spitting out the last of the vomit from his mouth.

"Well, live and learn…"

"Riku, you're not _listening_."

"I-"

"I _like_ you," Sora repeated, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and lurching toward Riku as if to kiss him.

"No! Oh, please, please no, Sora, you just threw up!"

Directed off course by Riku's forceful argument, Sora gave up, letting his eyes close as he fell against Riku's shoulder, one shaky arm draped across Riku's chest onto his other shoulder.

Sighing, Riku settled down into a sitting position, gingerly wrapping his arms around Sora and hating himself for being so confused. As a general rule, Riku tried not to be confused, and was never this affected by anyone outside his family.

"You're alright," he said softly, hugging Sora tighter as he let out a moan of intoxication.

"Everything's spinning," Sora mumbled, hiding his face more in Riku's shoulder.

"Don't be ridiculous, your eyes are closed."

"I can't see…"

"Because your- never mind."

Riku leaned his head back against the dresser and set about trying to decode his heart.

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"I love you," Axel murmured, holding Roxas close. "Rox, I _love_ you. I always have."

"I-I love _you_," Roxas choked out, pulling back a little and looking down. "I just… I- I can't."

Axel sighed, and the two were silent for a minute, listening to the music and looking pointedly away from each other.

"I'm sorry," Roxas said finally.

"I know."

Axel shrugged. "You gotta do what you gotta do," he said, and after another pause, he pulled Roxas close into a hug. "Think about it though, okay?"

"Yeah. I will."

"No hard feelings?"

"I hope not," Roxas said, letting out a small laugh.

Axel forced himself to look on the bright side and put on a smile. "Good," he said. "Friends?"

"Friends," Roxas said, and he held out a hand for Axel to shake.

Axel was pretty sure he felt his heart threaten to break again as he shook Roxas's hand – he was _shaking hands_ with Roxas in Sora's fucking bathroom – but he swallowed down the feelings and combined it all into one light kiss on Roxas's forehead. "Do think about it, though," he added. "You know, when you're up there on stage and everyone's cheering for you, maybe you'll see what I see in you, and maybe you'll see that there's no reason to… I… well. That's all, I guess."

Roxas nodded, and Axel numbly opened the door, turned off the light, and followed Roxas back downstairs.

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"Guys, guys, does everyone have a sober ride? I- Everyone has to be out by 3, but if you don't have a sober driver, you're not leaving."

Axel nodded at Riku as he passed him on the main floor.

"Oh! Axel, wait a sec!"

Rounding up his brother, he shoved a hot mug of tea into his hands and pushed him back towards the stairway to the basement. "Can you take this to Sora? He's down on the couch, he's… well, he's not throwing up anymore, but keep an eye on him. Please."

Axel raised his eyebrows. "You made him tea?"

"What?"

"I just- I mean, you… I… I'll bring this down, but I'll be right back."

It took him a few minutes to coerce Sora into drinking the tea, which Roxas supplemented with a glass of lukewarm water, and by the time he returned to the kitchen, Riku was alone, piling bottles and cans into bags to be recycled.

"You took care of him," Axel said, hoisting himself onto the kitchen counter.

Riku shrugged.

"You… care about him."

Riku slammed the bottle he was holding into the bag and stood up, hesitating.

"Ax, I'm not gay. I'm just not."

"Are you 'not gay' in quotes, or are you really… not gay?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"What!"

"Axel, how long have you known me? I'm really not gay. I'm not attracted to men. I have absolutely no desire to have sex with Sora."

Axel nodded slowly. "Okay, no need to get defensive."

"I don't know…" Riku trailed off, trying to find the right words. He leaned against the counter beside Axel. "I don't know why I care so much… about him. I've become… attached."

"Well, there's this thing called friendship."

"It's different."

"Ohhhkay…"

"I- he…"

Axel said nothing, waiting.

"He tried to kiss me tonight," Riku said slowly.

"And you did… what?"

"Well, he'd just thrown up."

"Ah."

Riku bit his lip. "The thing is, I- if he hadn't just, I mean, if he hadn't been drunk, if he hadn't been… covered. In vomit. I- I might have… I mean, I would have… maybe…"

"You would have… maybe… kissed him back?" Axel supplied, hoping to hurry up the sentence that Riku didn't seem to want to say.

Riku nodded, turning slightly red.

"But you're not attracted to him?"

"I don't think so. I mean, no, I'm not. I mean, fuck! I don't know."

Axel laughed as Riku huffed away, clearly done with the conversation.

"_Don't_ tell anyone," he said, heading for the stairs.

"Oh, I won't, I won't," Axel replied lazily, and after a few minutes of peace and quiet, he too wound his way down to the basement.

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Zexion smiled to himself as Axel appeared at the bottom of the stairs. All the extra people seemed to have left, and the only ones remaining were all gathered around the couches in the basement now. Namine had fallen asleep on Xigbar's shoulder, and Kairi, Marluxia and Luxord were sitting against the coffee table, making fun of whatever was on TV. Zexion had stopped watching long ago, around the time Demyx had dropped to his knees in front of the couch and Zexion had felt the triple intoxication of weed, alcohol, and head all at once. While he'd come down from his high a little while ago, he was still a bit buzzed from what he'd drank beforehand, and he was strangely unconcerned with how sloppy he assumed he must look.

His eyes were slightly rimmed with red and his cheeks were still a bit flushed. Demyx hadn't really got around to re-buttoning his jeans, though they did manage to get zipped up, and he'd gotten unbearably hot when he was high and taken off his jacket, leaving him in only a plain white t-shirt. Beside him, Demyx had stretched out with one of Sora's dad's old guitars, and Zexion played idly with the blond's hair as he strummed out simple melodies.

Past Demyx there was Riku, drinking his first and only beer of the night and seemingly comfortable with Sora curled up against him, and on the other couch, Axel and Roxas seemed to be joking about something without any hint of strife between them.

Demyx began, quietly, to sing, and Zexion closed his eyes, content to feel the voice vibrating gently through his bones.

_Pain throws your heart to the ground  
Love turns the whole thing around  
No, it won't all go the way it should  
But I know the heart of life is good._

* * *

  
**Thanks again for reading! Feel free to leave a review and let me know what you're thinking. :)**


	13. Not Completely Reprehensible

**AN:** Hey everyone. As usual, I'm sorry it took me so long to get this one out. If anyone is still reading, here it is! Heh. Anyway, this is, as you can probably tell, the last chapter of Dig. It always was going to be, I didn't just cut it short because I got tired of it or anything. Might write something else to go with it, or after it - this story is like my baby, even though it took me forever to finish it up!

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the story! Thank you very much for reading, and don't hesitate to let me know what you thought!

* * *

Axel closed his eyes, lying back on the roof. He inhaled the scent of gunpowder and coffee and charred hot dogs, exhaled white steam into the dry winter air. Down below, on the driveway, something green and pink and white fizzed and crackled and popped, and Axel opened his eyes to watch the smoke twisting gently into the night sky. He shivered.

"Axel, come on, don't you wanna do one?"

Riku was staring critically up at him from the driveway, and Axel took a deep breath before grinning and climbing down from the roof.

"Alright, alright, get outta the way! You're doing them all wrong, anyway!"

"Oh, whatever, Axel!"

It was the night before opening night, and Sora had brought over a box of little fireworks to celebrate with on the driveway. In the spirit of "Fourth of July in December", the boys had made hot dogs and set out blankets and sleeping bags on the roof outside Axel and Riku's window, though it was proving to be colder than previously expected.

Approaching the box, Axel knelt down beside a shivering Roxas.

"What have we got left?" he asked, nudging the other boy's elbow out of his way.

Roxas sniffed, his nose bright red in the cold. "Looks like… a tiger or a bee. And like, 40 sparklers. Take your pick."

"Sparklers, pshh, whatever! I'll take the tiger!"

Roxas laughed, tossing Axel something square and orange and black. "Go for it."

"Hang on, hang on! Wait one sec!"

Looking up, Axel spotted Sora clambering onto the roof behind Riku, his chocolate spikes pressed flat against the sides of his face by a snug-fitting ski cap.

"Are you serious? It's probably a better view from down here, anyway," Axel muttered, heading to the center of the driveway with his lighter and his cardboard tiger. But he waited anyway, until the three other boys had all settled in at the edge of the roof, feet hanging over the gutter.

"Ready?" he called out, and then there was smoke, and a few sparks, and then nothing.

After a moment, Sora yelled "Kick it!" And after another moment of hesitation, Axel took a few tentative steps toward the ostensibly dead firework.

"Are you sure it's not gonna like, blow off my foot or-"

Axel leapt back as the tiger began to spark again, and for the next thirty seconds or so it whistled and steamed and shot a fountain of yellow-orange sparks into the air. Afterward, Sora clapped and cheered and Riku sipped his coffee and Axel went and set up the bee.

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"You're shivering."

Sora looked up. He'd been watching Roxas and Axel on the driveway, drawing smoke pictures with sparklers. Riku looked very… controlled, Sora thought, but he shrugged it off.

"It's December," he replied, smiling. "Isn't that normal?"

Riku stood up. "I'll get you another blanket."

"That's okay," Sora said quickly, standing up as well. "I got it. Where are they?"

"I'm already up," Riku mumbled, and he climbed through the window. Sora climbed in after him, following him through the boys' bedroom and halfway down the hall to a linen closet. Riku pulled out a heavy, old quilt, forcing it into Sora's hands without making eye contact. When Sora didn't move, he sighed.

"What?"

"What's wrong with you?" Sora asked slowly. "You've been acting really weird, ever since the party."

"I- no I haven't," Riku said, leaning back against the wall. The hallway was dark, all four of the resident parents were in bed for the night.

"You have. You have, and no one will tell me what happened. I can't remember anything after we smoked, and I _know_ something happened, and no one will _tell _me!"

"Nothing happened," Riku growled, pushing past Sora and heading back toward the bedroom.

"If nothing happened, then why won't anyone-"

"God _dammit_, Sora!"

Riku stopped in front of Axel's bed, the light from outside illuminating his pale face through the window.

"Close the door," he added, defeated, and Sora dropped the quilt on Riku's bed before doing so. Riku had taken a seat on Axel's bed, and after closing the door, Sora sat down beside him.

"Are you going to tell me now?"

Riku closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. "You said some things to me," he began slowly. "When you were… you were really drunk."

Sora's chest tightened, and he stared at the floor. "What things," he said, monotone.

"You said, I mean, you said that… You said that you, I mean, that you… liked me. Look, I- the whole- the whole thing is stupid," Riku stammered, watching Sora's expression change. "Just forget about it, we can pretend it never-"

"-happened," Sora whispered, finishing the sentence for him. "No, I don't think it works that way. I think now that we both know it happened, I should probably, um, I should probably go, or something. This is, um, this is really awkward. And humiliating. And-"

And Sora never finished what he was saying, because then Riku was kissing him, tense and stiff like he didn't really know how.

"I thought you were straight," Sora murmured, pulling back a little.

Riku paused for a moment, looking down. "So did I," he said eventually. "But you're- I- I don't wanna talk about it."

"I'm irresistible," Sora said, grinning. "You want to kiss me, and hold me, and take care of me. You want-"

"Shut up."

"You want to make me soup when I have a cold. And buy things for me. And take me out to dinner."

"Sora, shut _up_!"

"Or maybe you just want to have sex with me. Since, after all, what was it? Relationships in high school are just a vehicle for hooking up, right?"

Riku blinked, and Sora was sure he looked just about ready to explode.

"It's not like that," he huffed, turning to wrench the window open. "Just forget it, okay? If you're gonna be like _that_."

And he climbed back out the window to the roof, and Sora just laughed.

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_We all have a weakness, but some of ours are easy to identify. Look me in the eye._

Roxas felt his body move on autopilot to the front of the stage. For a fleeting moment, he was terrified. Terrified of the full house in front of him, of the bright lights shining in his eyes, of the costume binding him and the microphone amplifying his voice, his breath.

_And ask for forgiveness, we'll make a pact to never speak that word again. Yes, you are my friend._

And then he wasn't Roxas anymore, was he? He was Theo, and he was in Hollywood, and the redhead in the shiny dress wasn't Kairi, she was Lola.

_We all have something that digs at us. At least we dig each other_.

And then he was singing, and his voice was louder and clearer and more perfect than he had ever heard it. He wondered if it was really coming from him, he wondered how he memorized all the lines he heard himself say.

_So when weakness turns my ego up, I know you'll count on the me from yesterday._

And then the adrenaline rush found its way through his veins and into his heart, and he felt his eyes gloss over as the song rang out from his throat. He stared out over the crowd, 500 shadowed faces, without really seeing.

_If I turn into another, dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me._

He let his eyes focus past the lights, and he could see Zexion and Riku and Namine in the booth. Kairi's voice brought him back to the stage, the harmony tugging his focus back to her face, caked with stage makeup. He felt himself move forward to take her hand, the familiar blocking burned into his muscle memory, and behind her he could see Axel standing in the wing, hands in pockets, muttering something inaudible into his crooked headset and shaking his head with a casual smile.

_Sing this song; remind me that we'll always have each other, when everything else is gone._

He let his eyes fall closed, and when he opened them they locked onto Axel's. He had no idea what he looked like, and honestly, he didn't care. But Axel was looking at him differently than he ever had before – he had fixed Roxas with a look of utter admiration and adoration, and as Kairi began to sing her verse, he shook his head again and looked down, laughing gently. When he looked up again, Roxas could swear he was trying not to cry.

And before Roxas got another chance to really think, he found himself swept back into the music. The musical was drawing to a close, and then the rest of the cast was there, and Rikku was carefully nudging him back into place as he tripped over a dance move, and then the curtain was down and Xigbar was in the wing signaling that their mics were off, and Kairi was grinning at him as she dragged him into the center of the line, and the curtain was going back up, Kairi stepped forward and all Roxas could hear was his own blood rushing through his ears, Rikku whispering something, and then Sora was shoving Roxas forward because it was his turn to bow, wasn't it? He was the other star, wasn't he?

And all at once the roar of the crowd overpowered the rush in Roxas's ears, and he couldn't stop _laughing_ because all of those people were standing up and cheering for_ him._

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"_You know, when you're up there on stage and everyone's cheering for you, maybe you'll see what I see in you, and maybe you'll see that there's no reason to… I… well. That's all, I guess."_

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It wasn't until the curtain went down for real that Roxas truly regained his sense of who and where he was and what was going on. He was immediately engulfed by the other actors, all of whom seemed to want to give him hugs and congratulations and in Kairi's case, kisses on the cheek. Breathlessly, he attempted to reciprocate, and over the crowd he saw Axel for a fleeting moment in the still-dark wing removing his headset before disappearing behind the curtains.

He didn't see him again, and Sora soon herded him down to the dressing room to wash off their stage makeup and change. His parents hadn't made it to the show, but Sora's had, and they were waiting in the hallway to take the two boys out for ice cream.

"Unless there's anything else you need to do here…?" Sora's mom asked, and Roxas looked back over his shoulder for a moment before shaking his head. The green room was still packed with other cast and crew, and he had no idea where he'd find Axel, or if he did, what he would really say to him.

"I'm good if you are," he said, looking to Sora, and they followed his parents out to the car.

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The second night felt almost better than the first, Roxas thought, if that was even possible. He didn't fumble his steps in the dancing sections, and there was only one major slip-up when Kairi inexplicably skipped an entire page of dialogue.

_So when sickness turns my ego up,_ _I know you'll act as a clever medicine_.

The post-show crowding was considerably less crazy on night two, and Roxas took his time in the bathroom scrubbing off his makeup. No one was waiting for him that night; his mom had called him mid-day to tell him they would have to catch the third and last night, their plane was delayed. They had left the keys to the BMW with him and trusted him to drive himself home without scratching it, and they would probably get home around 2:30 in the morning.

By the time he hit the dressing room, there were only a couple boys left in it, both freshmen he didn't really know. He nodded an exhausted "thanks" to them when they offered their congratulations, and after shucking off the tight jeans and shirt from the finale, he pulled on his own, looser jeans and stood still for a moment of quiet decompression. Eyes closed, he inhaled slowly before letting out a deep sigh and reaching for his shirt.

On his way out to the car, he ran into Riku, who was driving out of the parking lot alone. He rolled down the window as he saw Roxas approaching.

"Hey, nice job tonight," he said, turning his music down.

"Thanks," Roxas replied, grinning. "You too, of course. Where's Axel?"

Riku raised his eyebrows. "He wasn't here tonight. Woke up with a fever and a headache, so Luxord covered for him. He'll be back tomorrow night, though – he only stayed home tonight because his mom wouldn't let him out of the house. Nothing too serious."

"Ahh."

A knowing smirk began to spread across Riku's face. "Why do you ask?"

Roxas returned the smug look, shrugging. "Oh, no reason. Just, ah, I didn't see you guys after the show last night, thought I'd… you know, congratulate him. It's his show too, after all."

"Uh huh."

Roxas laughed, and he watched the cloud of steam float away under the parking lot lights. Then a car was pulling up behind Riku's, so they said goodnight, and Roxas trudged through the salty slush to the BMW, somehow unable to stop smiling.

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The third show was bittersweet, as closing nights always are. Roxas felt he was finally getting the hang of this crazy theatre beast, and yet he knew this was the last night he'd get to perform.

Mr. Leonhart took him aside in the deserted hallway outside the green room before the show, gazing down on a costumed and made-up Roxas with what looked like pride.

"Look," he said, "I dunno if you know this, but the past two nights you've gone out there and absolutely blown everyone away. I know it's, well, high school theatre, and I know you usually have an athletic schedule to work around, but I really hope you'll consider auditioning for the Spring Play."

"I, uh, I- thank you," Roxas stuttered, looking down. "I… I never thought I'd be doing this," he finished lamely, unsure of what to say.

"Well, you're pretty f-king good out there," Leonhart responded, half-assedly censoring himself by skipping a key vowel. "We could really use more people like you, that's all I'm gonna say. Anyway, whatever you end up doing, break a leg tonight. I dunno how or when it happened, but this disaster of a musical actually turned into something halfway-good with you guys behind it."

Roxas laughed, adjusting his mic to comfort. "Thanks? I think?"

"Of course. Now go out there and make me look good."

And before Roxas could respond with anything more than a nod, he was gone, off to check on the booth situation.

Marly did a final makeup check, and before he knew it, Roxas found himself back on stage, sweating under the hot lights and singing his throat raw.

About halfway through the play, he found his parents in the audience, directly in the middle of the auditorium. Moments later, after rushing through a costume change backstage, he looked up to find Axel standing in front of him.

"Ax-"

"Chill," the redhead whispered, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. "You've got a good minute before your cue. I heard you were lookin' for me."

Roxas felt a blush rising in his cheeks, and before he could respond, Axel spoke again.

"Don't sweat it, Theo. I'll be around after the show."

Pushing Roxas up to the edge of the curtain, he leaned over the shorter boy's shoulder to whisper in his ear.

"Knock 'em dead, babe."

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Axel sat alone on the steps outside the theater, watching the crowd slowly dissipate into the quiet night. Snow was falling, but it didn't feel too cold, and staring down at his all-black stage crew ensemble, he tried to fight off the familiar Closing Night feeling. Riku had already headed home – Axel was content to walk tonight, and though he still had a slight fever, his parents had agreed to allow it. A scuffed pair of sneakers stopped in front of him, and he looked up to see a shiny, fresh-scrubbed Roxas looking down at him. They stayed like that for a moment, silently regarding each other, until Axel coughed a little and finally spoke.

"You were great up there," he said, smirking. "Nice job, man."

Roxas' neutral expression broke into a knowing grin. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Thank you."

"No, really," Axel continued, "You were really good. Like, ah, like nothing I've ever seen. You're a natural."

Roxas simply stared at the falling snow, his grin softening into a subtler smile.

"I heard at _least_ four freshman girls saying they wanted to make out with you, so, y'know, if that's any measure…"

Roxas snorted, then looked back at Axel. "You were right," he said quietly. "In the bathroom, at Sora's party. You were right about everything."

"Yeahhh, I know."

They fell into another comfortable silence, and Roxas shuffled his feet around in the slush before speaking again.

"Man, all those people were cheering for me. What a trip, you know?"

"Yeah, because you were _fucking_ amazing. I don't know what part of it is so hard for you to understand – you're… arrestingly talented."

Roxas looked away again, unsure of how to handle the overload of compliments he'd been receiving. He could feel Axel's eyes on him, and he spotted Kairi in the parking lot waving goodnight to him. He waved back, then allowed himself a contented sigh before turning back to Axel.

"So, are you gonna stand up soon or what?"

"Uh, excuse you, I'm extremely sick, maybe you didn't notice in your diva dressing room," Axel replied jokingly.

"Don't be facetious," Roxas retorted, amused. "But if you _are_ as deathly ill as you'd have me believe, I guess I can just drive your sick ass home and kiss the shit out of you some other time."

"Kiss the shit out of me? Is that what you had planned?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

Axel slowly got to his feet, brushing himself off as he drew himself up to full height. "Well, let's see. That would be… not very subtle, but quite a gesture considering your past opinions on the issue. Unnecessarily risky, since I am, in fact, mildly sick, thus you risk your own health in the process. Leaves a lot of unanswered questions, for example, would it mean we're together? Are you truly still in love with me or are you just overcome with emotion due to the end of your first major foray into the theatre? But overall, not a completely reprehensible idea."

"Dear _lord_, shut _up_," Roxas muttered, and, wrapping his arms around Axel's neck, he captured the taller boy's lips in the first kiss he'd really meant in years.

_If I turn into another  
__Dig me up from under what is covering  
__The better part of me  
__Sing this song  
__Remind me that we'll always have each other  
__When everything else is gone_


End file.
